Virginia Woolfe's Writing Style

Kyla Borders
Napier
AP lang & comp per. 2
13 October 2011

"Yet, because he was so small, … of other human beings." Woolfe incorporates many rhetorical devices to enhance her essay and portray the meaning of her anecdote, such as the one used here where she employs personification. Woolfes' writing style is one in which she uses descriptive language, personification, and other rhetorical devices to enhance the imagery and help us picture the setting, plots and characters in her story. Woolfes' writing style is very descriptive to the point where almost every sentence holds an immense amount of imagery detail. Her writing style was inspired by many things but mostly from her depression, which most believe to be when her mother passed away when she was only thirteen years of age. Though, her mother passed when she was quite young, Virginia was born into an incredibly gifted family, her father being an author, sister being an amazing painter, and brothers both went to universities. Virginia, like the rest of her family, was incredibly gifted in what she did. Woolf was one of the modernists of her time put a new kind of spin on things. Virginia Woolfe being not the happiest person in the world found her way of portraying her emotions through writing. Virginia went through a strong depression towards the end of her career and life.

That depression helped create the writing structure and style we have now come to know. Woolf's writing style is very unique compared to that of other writers of her time, she uses personification to help her anecdote The Death of the Moth. Woolf uses personification all throughout her essay. The moth in this essay is portrayed as the character of life and is fighting to live against death which is sneaking up on it slowly. The life in the moth was energetic and lively as Woolf sees him and replies that his chi was "as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig-zagging to show us the true nature of life." She sees the moth as one little creature who is energetic yet pathetic at the same time. Woolf wants us to see the moth as an upbeat creature that is fighting so dearly to live but as the time comes he is losing the battle against death. Even the surroundings that she is in seems a little erie as the "Stillness and quiet had replaced the previous animation." She uses the personification to emphasize the tragedy that had just happened. Woolf uses the her narrative of the anecdote she experienced in order to create the thematic process of life and death.

The idea Woolf wants to portray is that the essence of life is chi, or energy. Woolf uses her own experience to do this. This narrative is like empathy, you can be sympathetic for the moth but not empathetic which means you have to have been through what he has, which most of us haven't. Woolf wants us to feel what she felt when she saw that moths energy slowly float away. Woolf uses setting to help convey this because when the moth was energetic and dancing around, the birds were flying, the plows were plowing and everything seemed to be going along nicely, like everyday. Once the moths energy left and the moth gave up the surrounding Woolf was in was that everything had that sort of erie feeling to it and everything stopped and

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