To the Fullest

In her story "The Death of the Moth," Virginia Woolf views the eponymous moth with "a kind of pity" (3) as it tries in vain to escape his prison. His struggle captivates Woolf, who admires the moth's vitality. Indeed, its defiance of a "power of such magnitude" (5) bears a resemblance to our own lives. Although the moth, to us, seems "frail and diminutive" (2), capable of little but "dancing and zigzagging" (3), we are not much better off in the grand scheme of things.

Woolf describes the morning as full of "possibilities of pleasure" (2), in contrast to the moth's "meager opportunities" (2), but what use are possibilities if not realized? The moth is constrained by the windowpane, but we are often constrained as well, either by our own limitations or those set by society. At least the moth takes every chance it can get, even if those chances seem "pathetic" (2) to us. We may have infinitely more opportunity than the moth, but few people take advantage of those opportunities.

So, although the moth's attempts are "futile" (4), and its "zest...pathetic" (2), Woolf recognizes it has a certain value. It is life in purest form, unburdened by philosophy. The moth refuses to give in to death, and that is the "true nature of life" (3). In the face of "oncoming doom" (5), we are just about as helpless as the moth--but that doesn't keep us from, as they say, fighting the good fight.