Question

Read Virginia Woolf’s "The Death of the Moth," an essay in which she contemplates life and death by reflecting on the death of a small "day moth," a type of moth that is active in the daytime. Try one of the techniques you have learned for talking with the text. Then answer these questions: What effect is Woolf striving for? How does she create that effect? How does the effect serve the purpose of her writing? Try developing a thesis statement and an outline for an essay in which you analyze the way Woolf’s style helps her achieve her purpose.

Answer 1

Answer and Explanation:

In "The Death of the Moth," Woolf portrays the battle of a moth to pass through a window and gain the freedom that it so longs for. In this text, the writing shows how the moth is persevering and advances against the window without fear and tries in every possible way to overcome it, until he gets tired, falls, tries to get up and continues the fight and die. When analyzing this text, we realized that Vírgina wanted to create reflections about our own life and force us to think about whether it is worth being committed to our battles, if we are doomed to death.

In this text Woolf wishes to make the struggle of the moth an allusion to the difficulties we encounter on our way. she wants to show how our nature makes us spend our whole lives fighting for goals and only stopping when death is in charge of ending this fight. This reflection is created from the reflections of the narrator himself, composed by Woolf who narrates his thoughts while watching the "dance" of the moth. The narrator, when expressing his feelings, makes the reader empathize and recognize the same thoughts in himself, which is the author's purpose to write the work.