While reading Virginia Woolf’s short story “The Death of the Moth” it is easy to make a conclusion that this text is written in order to illustrate the power of the death over life. It is clear that an attempt to avoid death and to overcome its appearance is hopeless. The logic of the story, the emotions, and feelings it reveals, the structure of the text may be convincing enough. Insect, which appears in the Woolf’s text, becomes the literary motif that helps to think over the existence of the humanity in the universe. In “The Death of the Moth” Woolf makes the reader feel pity about the short and purposeless life of the insect. However, the respect for the eternal power of death is not the only one purpose of the author. The story turns into the process of restitution of lost souls, as it shows the briefness of existence, the inspiring strengths of life, and the omnipotence of death in the context of general cosmological infinity.
“The Death of Moth” is a short story that provides a comment on the briefness of human existence in comparison to the world’s cosmological eternity. This intention is covered even in the description of the tiny living creature: “They are hybrid creatures, neither gay… nor sombre” (Woolf 3). The hybridity coexists with the instability and helplessness which accompany the whole process of human living. Although Woolf recognizes the right of the moth to be satisfied with life, its existence is as transient as the life of those lost souls that are inhabiting cities and countries. H. Holly, the author of the book Virginia Woolf and the Discourse of Science: The Aesthetics of Astronomy (2003) claims that a reading of Woolf’s fascination with insects, alongside her very clear sense of earth as a planet whirling through space, affords the possibility of new interpretations of her essay (127). The narrator from “The Death of Moth” follow the moth that flutters against a window glass.
These attempts are an accurate image of the limits that exist even in the most unpretentious and plain life. The stream of consciousness, which is one of the Woolf’s favorite literary methods, gives her an ability to show immediately every manifestation of the spiritual life of a human. The moth flies dynamically from one corner of the window frame to another, and the narrator’s mind follow it on these four points. Moreover, the moves of the moth look particularly insignificant in comparison to the size of the world outside the room, with its sky, the sea and far-off smoke of houses. The narrator states: “What he could do he did” (Woolf 4). This statement impresses with its simplicity and irreversibility.
The strength of life, its energy which inspires all the living creatures, makes the moth flying from side to side of the window glass and captures the mind of the narrator: “Such vigour came rolling in from the fields… that it was difficult to keep the eyes… turned upon the book” (Woolf 3). Lost souls are those who cannot handle with this energy and accept it as an absolute. The feeling of pity that the moth reveals is the result of the internal problems of the observer. Sometimes, the external world seems to be an inexhaustible source of possibilities of pleasure. It is an inability to reach them all, which cause the state of fatal perplexity. The moth itself cannot comprehend that its existence is “a hard fate” (Woolf 4).
The role of the observer is to assess its tenderness and simplicity and to make conclusions. The narrator from the Woolf’s short story considers the insect to be the cluster of energy, “little or nothing but life” (4). This discovery may turn into the lifebuoy to those human beings who are lost in their inability to be equal with the entire world. The author reminds that usually people consider the life to be the process of the constant need to hump around with the burthen of cumbers and doubts. An image of the moth and its simple activities reveals the feeling of pity, although its entity is supported by the driving force of natural living.
The concerns of the observer come to life when the omnipotence of death becomes apparent. The narrator is distracted for some time but when the moth gets the attention back its vital force is running out. The insect was trying to resume his fluttering but failed. While observing the tiny drama of the moth, the narrator notes: “The helplessness of his attitude roused me… he was in difficulties… he could not… raise himself” (Woolf 5). The observer abandons the intention to help the insect because the sense of fatality and the inevitability of the death discharges one’s motivation.
When the moth suddenly dies, the narrator reflects on the indifference of the universe to all the souls of the world: “the power was there… indifferent, impersonal, and not attending to anything in particular” (Woolf 6). The feeling of lostness comes from the understanding that the external forces may oppose every creature and it is useless to try to do anything. The fact that one can only watch the efforts of not only tiny insects but also the whole masses of human beings to fight against the death is the main reason of the unconditional acceptance of the world’s rules. The struggle of the little moth and the narrator is the fighting on the side of life against the magnificent power of death. The struggle is always over when the living creature knows death. Both the narrator and the moth recognize that death is stronger than everything.
“The Death of the Moth” by Virginia Woolf is another confirmation of the statement that the phenomena of life and death are always a wonder. Moreover, the change between life and death is always strange and unexpected. The analogy for humans, who are lost and unconscious in most of their activities is clear. The short-lived existence of the moth is as tiny in front of the world’s power as the living of any other creature. This statement, however, is a hand of relief to the lost souls, who must see their existence in the larger context of the cosmic magnitude.
