Virginia Woolf's The Death Of The Moth

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“Death is stronger than I am”: the Inevitable End as Depicted in Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth” Virginia Woolf’s non-fiction work “The Death of the Moth” is written with a deeper meaning than one would assume from simply glancing at the title. Woolf successfully creates a sense of intimacy with all her readers with her choice of words and perspective. The speaker’s mild curiosity towards the moth is the main occurrence in this story. One can see beyond the ordinary and make profound connections with life, struggles, and the inevitability of death. “The Death of the Moth” captures the overall common factors that all living organisms share and go through. Woolf uses this small creature as a profound symbol for all beings and their journey…show more content…
It is apparent that Woolf admires the moth as his final moments were witnessed. The author portrays her admiration by examining the “triumph of so great a force over so mean an antagonist” (58) that filled her with a sense of wonder. This admiration is exemplified by stating that the “gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude…moved one strangely” (58). “One could only watch” (58) the narrator had thought as she examined the moth relax and grow stiff when it had finally died. It was at this point that the reader viewed the inevitable fate that the narrator had come to accept. Woolf uses this simple moth to represent an entire depiction that death is a battle that no creature can overcome or claim victory over. She states this point by comparing the moth to an entire city saying that “the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against the oncoming doom which he could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew, had any chances against death” (58). Woolf speaks for all living things as she ends her story with “death is stronger than I am”
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