The Death of the Moth

“The Death of the Moth” is an essay penned by prolific writer Virginia Woolf in 1941 and posthumously published in 1942. Woolf died by suicide after a lifelong struggle with mental illness precipitated by many personal losses. The author’s biography adds additional poignancy to this essay regarding mortality and the mystery of life’s meaning.

The essay begins by interrogating the day moth’s identity and connection to nature—and ends on its death. Woolf describes the view outside her window: a pastoral scene brimming with poetic imagery, including horses, birds “soaring,” and an Earth “gleamed with moisture” (Paragraph 1). However, what Woolf finds most intriguing is the moth fluttering around her window. As she observes the moth, she finds beauty and sadness in it “vigorously” flying “from one corner of his compartment...across to the other” (Paragraph 2). With anthropomorphism and metaphor, Woolf expresses an emotional connection to the moth’s pitiful joy at its lackluster life and pitiable suffering upon its end. She gives the “frail and diminutive” moth a sense of humanity, wondering why nature would inject such force and energy into a creature so limited by its capacity (Paragraph 2).