Blog Response 1: "Death of a Moth

The essay "Death of a Moth" by Virginia Woolf has a philosophical depth that strikes as insightful in a way. The reader begins the essay accompanying the author first hand as she takes in the scene of the windowsill looking outward at the various marvels of nature. All of the things she sees are ordinary but her insight provides them a light through which we the readers can gain a look into how she sees the world. Her first sighting of something out of the ordinary really takes the reader much further into her psyche and allows us to see what was mentioned in the preface, her depression. She noted that it was quite strange to see a moth during the daylight hours and stated that it was different than other moths that she had seen before. She then went on to notice that the small moth's world was so utterly miniscule yet he knew no better therefore the lost would go on unnoticed. Finally as a few moments of observation, the moth seemed to be struggling to stay in the world of the living while death was becoming so close and eventually died. Ms, Woolf has created a sort way of broadcasting her views of the world without it looking so blatantly obvious. When we first saw the moth in the daylight, a naive person lost in the world or simply too innocent to know any better such as a child or one with childlike innocence. This innocence allowed the moth to be satisfied with its small life in the window pane just as a child thinks the world is perfect because it knows life only in the confines of its home or neighborhood or school never really realizing the great magnitude of the world we all live in til later in life. Finally when we saw the death of the moth the reader is shown that the innocence or ignorance of the moth is a parallel to that of a human who tries to beat death, it showed that you may try all you want but it will never be enough. These were all views into Ms. Woolf's psyche that showed the depression that we all know manifested into her death. Her use of hidden parallels shows how an expert can show emotions so complex as loneliness, hopelessness, and despair in a simple story about a moth that landed on a windowsill.