How does Woolf anthropomorphize the moth in "The Death of the Moth"?
Anthropomorphism is a literary device where the author assigns human qualities to nonhuman beings like animals, objects, and gods. In her essay “The Death of the Moth,” Virginia Woolf describes a moth by giving it human characteristics, portraying the insect as if it were a person. She refers to the moth throughout the essay as “he,” “him,” and “his” instead of “it” or “its.”
Woolf initially introduces the moth as it were a happy and fashionably dressed person:
The present specimen, with his narrow hay-colored wings, fringed with a tassel of the same color, seemed to be content with life.
Woolf imbues it with emotion and a sense of style. Unfortunately, it is encased in a square window pane and slowly dies over the course of a bright September morning. Nonetheless, it seems blissfully ignorant of its entrapment and fate, or adjusts to its circumstances like a person who can...
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roll with the punches. Woolf admires the moth’s “zest in enjoying his meager opportunities.” Flying from corner to corner, it exudes vitality
as if a fiber, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body.
The last part of this description conjures up images of a feeble and shrinking elderly person. Moreover, the moth—like an old person consigned to a room in a nursing home—will become frustrated, trapped, and bored. For now, though, it continues to celebrate and play, oblivious of or despite its entrapment. The moth flies around as it were
dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life.
Obviously, the moth is not literally dancing or consciously showing off; nonetheless, Woolf’s word choice conveys the moth’s carefree joy as if it were zigzagging out on a dance floor for an audience. Eventually, this tiny dancer retires from the dance floor:
After a time, tired by his dancing apparently, he settled on the window ledge in the sun.
Like a person taking a break from cutting a rug, the moth rests and then tries to resume. Like an old person, however, it appears stiff, awkward, and spent. It can only
flutter to the bottom of the windowpane; and when he tried to fly across it he failed.
Despite several attempts to fly, the moth falls
on to his back on the windowsill. The helplessness of his attitude roused me. It flashed upon me that he was in difficulties; he could no longer raise himself; his legs struggled vainly.
Woolf’s comment about the “helplessness of his attitude” implies that the moth is intentionally not trying hard enough, like someone with a bad attitude. The poor moth seems like a helpless old person who has fallen and cannot get up. Woolf believes that
extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings.
She suggests that the moth chooses not to use its tiny yet powerful legs to any effect. Suddenly, though, the moth seems to have a change of heart and is stubborn enough for its last hurrah of resistance:
Nevertheless, after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself.
She cheers for the moth but know that death is inevitable. After putting up a valiant fight, the moth dies in a dignified manner, like a mortally wounded soldier or duelist who expires with honor.
The body relaxed, and instantly grew stiff. The struggle was over. The insignificant little creature now knew death…The moth having righted himself now lay most decently and uncomplainingly composed. O yes, he seemed to say, death is stronger than I am.
Why does Woolf pity and admire the moth in "The Death of the Moth"?
In "The Death of the Moth," Virginia Woolf ruminates on the existence of a moth as she observes its final moments before dying. Her viewpoint is one that combines both pity and admiration, but what it is interesting is that, in both cases, much of her sentiments concerning the moth comes from the same underlying source.
As she notes in her train of thought, there is an existential meagerness to the moth's life as it flies pointlessly from corner to corner along the window pane. As Woolf notes, for all the vastness of the world, as far as the moth is concerned, this window might as well be the totality of its existence. This is the reason she pities the moth. And yet, at the same time, she notes the moth's existence has a sense of purity about it she cannot help but be struck by. Thus, she writes, "He was little or nothing but life."
When speaking about her admiration for the moth, it is worth remembering that Virginia Woolf herself suffered from depression and mental illness, a condition that was so severe as to eventually cause her to commit suicide. With this in mind, it is worth wondering if, even beyond admiration, in some small sense she might even, in her own way, envy the moth for its simplicity, free of the ambiguities and complexities of civilization or the traumas of her own existence.
And yet, the moth faces death just like all living things, and Woolf observes the moth's last desperate struggles to cling to life. Woolf discusses the near omnipotent power of death as a force that cannot be overcome, and yet she is struck by the moth's desperate struggle to stay alive, even in the face inevitability. It is this desperate struggle to cling to life, to oppose the overwhelming power of death in its own small and miniscule way, that strikes Woolf as particularly admirable where the moth is concerned.