Virginia Woolf - the Death of the Moth
Battle between Life and Death
Our existence is the battle between life and death. We face it everywhere; in people’s eyes’ and behavior, in the motions of the creatures that surround us and in the nature that somehow dies in the winter and gets a new life in spring. This battle is impossible to remain unnoticed because it is simply the way of life. In Virginia Woolf’s essay “The Death of the Moth”, she writes about a moth that is trying to get ‘a new life’ by going through the windowpane and run away from death.
Virginia Woolf was a significant figure in London modernist literary society and she was considered one of the greatest innovators in the English language. Due to her hard childhood, as her mother, sister-in-low and father died when she was young, she had several nervous breakdowns. Virginia had the illness which was called manic-depressive disorder in those times. On the march 28, 1941, Woolf filled her overcoat’s pockets with stones and drowned herself in the river near to her house. “The Death of the Moth” was published in 1942, after her death, and this is the reason why this essay is considered to be written about her feelings before she decided to commit suicide. like the moth, she seemed to say, “Death is stronger than I am.”
The moth flew from one side, to the other, of his square of the windowpane. Nothing remained for him but this, while the “possibilities of pleasure” were enormous in that morning. The world, outside, was filled with such a vigor that it was hard for the author to keep an eye on the book; the rooks were soaring in the air with clamor, the plough was already started and the earth gleamed with moisture. The same energy that was outside inspired the moth too. He was trying to escape the scarcity of the room, in comparison Virginia was trying to escape from her world of depression too. From the world which was not filled with the same energy that was outside.
“He was little or nothing but life”, but the situation
Our existence is the battle between life and death. We face it everywhere; in people’s eyes’ and behavior, in the motions of the creatures that surround us and in the nature that somehow dies in the winter and gets a new life in spring. This battle is impossible to remain unnoticed because it is simply the way of life. In Virginia Woolf’s essay “The Death of the Moth”, she writes about a moth that is trying to get ‘a new life’ by going through the windowpane and run away from death.
Virginia Woolf was a significant figure in London modernist literary society and she was considered one of the greatest innovators in the English language. Due to her hard childhood, as her mother, sister-in-low and father died when she was young, she had several nervous breakdowns. Virginia had the illness which was called manic-depressive disorder in those times. On the march 28, 1941, Woolf filled her overcoat’s pockets with stones and drowned herself in the river near to her house. “The Death of the Moth” was published in 1942, after her death, and this is the reason why this essay is considered to be written about her feelings before she decided to commit suicide. like the moth, she seemed to say, “Death is stronger than I am.”
The moth flew from one side, to the other, of his square of the windowpane. Nothing remained for him but this, while the “possibilities of pleasure” were enormous in that morning. The world, outside, was filled with such a vigor that it was hard for the author to keep an eye on the book; the rooks were soaring in the air with clamor, the plough was already started and the earth gleamed with moisture. The same energy that was outside inspired the moth too. He was trying to escape the scarcity of the room, in comparison Virginia was trying to escape from her world of depression too. From the world which was not filled with the same energy that was outside.
“He was little or nothing but life”, but the situation