The Death Of A Moth Analysis

What do the timeless sacrifice of a writer’s quality of life for their art and the abject insignificance of our desperate attempts to evade the cold, unforgiving embrace of death have in common? Most likely nothing. Nevertheless, these two themes are essential to Virginia Woolf and Annie Dillard’s narrative essays, “The Death of the Moth” and “The Death of a Moth”, represented in each case by a moth’s death as an objective correlative. In both essays, the objective correlative is established using both rhetorical and literary devices in a holistic manner to create a comparison between each abstract concept and a concrete image.
Throughout “The Death of the Moth” and “The Death of a Moth”, several rhetorical devices are used strategically not …show more content…
The imagery surrounding the moth’s death in Dillard’s essay relies on connotative language and religious symbolism to create a feeling of rebirth and saintliness. The moth, “… [Burns] for two hours without changing, without bending or leaning – only glowing within, like a building fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls, like a hollow saint, like a flame-faced virgin gone to God.” Dillard describes the image of the flame burning from the moth as, “…a saffron-yellow flame that robed her to the ground like any immolating monk.” In both of these quotations, there is a heavy implication of self-sacrifice for a greater purpose. The imagery of the moth burning “without bending or leaning” creates a parallel to the biblical crucifixion of Jesus, and together with the reference to immolation, establishes a theme of sacrificing one’s physical body for a greater purpose, aligning with the essay’s objective correlative – the moth’s death as a representation of the sacrificial nature of artistry. Woolf’s description of the moth as, “little or nothing but life,” and, “… [A simple] form of the energy that was rolling in at the open window…” makes one think of purity; essentially life in its simplest form. Taking into account the imagery and connotations created by Woolf’s description, the idea of the moth as a

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