Use Of Figurative Language In Virginia Woolf's Death Of The Moth

Mark Twain once stated, “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” In Virginia Woolf’s essay “The Death of the Moth,” she observes the moth’s actions and the struggles it faces. Woolf keeps an eye on the moth and watches as the moths go through its course of life of struggling to get through the windowpanes, and eventually reaches death. The figurative language and syntax in the essay efficiently conveys the matters of life and death and what it means to be nothing but life.
In the short essay, figurative language, specifically metaphor, is used effectively to connect life and death. Woolf witnessed the comparison and connection of life and death as she saw the moth struggling for its life. Even when the moth was still alive, “the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves.” Although it struggled to escape from the grasp of death and cling onto life, that escape appears impossible. The author conveys life through the moth and death through the moth’s sufferings. Eventually, the moth, symbolic of life, loses to its sufferings, paving the way for death, its
Through the usage of figurative language and syntax, specifically metaphor and juxtaposition, Woolf successfully illustrated the matters of life and death and that the moth is nothing but life. Life and death are similar because they’re both strange and unpredictable. Whereas, they are different because life has a form, a soul, that death does not. It was shown in The Death of the Moth that the moth had a pitiful, yet admirable life due to its size and short life span. When the time came of it, having to struggle to stay alive, the moth had to put up a fight. Despite the impossible challenge of fighting to stay alive, the moth still fought with all the life in it, depicting exceptional courage and purpose. Nevertheless, in the end, death always