Response to Woolf's "The Death of the Moth"

Observing the moth in “The Death of the Moth,” Virginia Woolf writes that it is often the small and overlooked things in this world that actually contain “a tiny bead of pure life” (266). The moth is [decked] with this tiny bead, which has “set it dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life” (266). Yet the moth is also pitiful because having “only a moth’s part in life, and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meager opportunities to the full, pathetic” (266). Woolf finds the moth both inspiring and pitiful.

By the end of this short essay, however, the moth assumes almost a heroic position. The moth becomes overturned and lies struggling on its back; yet, it manages to right itself before gracefully accepting death, when it seems to say “O yes . . . death is stronger that I am” (267). Woolf calls the moth’s righting a “superb . . . last protest” and claims that the “gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desire to keep , moved one strangely” (267).

I was reminded of the cliché, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Life is where we see it. The best things come in small packages. Beauty comes to us through the unexpected. Who would have thought that a day moth could exhibit such a pure stream of life? Day moths “do not excited that pleasant sense of dark autumn night and icy-blossom which the commonest yellow-underwing asleep in the shadow of the curtain” does, and they are not “gay like butterflies” either (265). By all accounts, a day moth should be something totally disregarded. But we can find beauty where we least expect to find it.