a bug's life

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i would just like to say that i hope everyone is considering all people in their community during this strange situation we're living in right now. it is most important to practice compassion and empathy when our normalcies are stripped away like this.

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 Woolf's inherent purpose is not simply to state the observed and short-lived activities of a moth, but rather to present a highly saturated and curated "pure bead of life", and its counter: death. The moth flies back and forth in front of the window without purpose. Should the moth "choose" to fly outwards into the city, it would be able to open itself up to a never ending expanse of earth for exploration. When Woolf presents her story of the moth, she attributes blatant human characteristics while making it a mindless or bothersome insect. Woolf establishes its humanity, noting "his zest in enjoying his meager opportunities to the full", while in tandem writing about the "pitiful" flight back and forth between the borders of the window. The contrast between fruitful attempts to "dance" and the fight against its own fate both make the the bug more human than it could ever be, and frames it as a thing to be sorry for. From the perspective of vitality, the bug finds a type of unconscious joy in its ellipse of flight. As Woolf gives the moth personal pronouns, she makes the repeated dance of happiness a human activity. Parallels between this bug and an everyday person are not innately drawn, but can be inferred by this structure. Relatively so, the moth's eponymous and helpless fate makes itself its own creature, separate from human qualities. Woolf differentiates the moth from a person, claiming that it struggled in order to "retain what no one else valued or desired to keep". In its final moments, the moth's effort to fight against the magnitude of death exhibits something separate than what we, as humans, are familiar with. Fighting against it on one moment, and understanding it in the next, Virginia Woolf recounts the death of the moth to explain the similar and contrasting elements of the journey between life and death.

Comments

  1. Ms. ValentinoMarch 15, 2020 at 1:21 PM

    I liked your call to action at the begin and second it!

    ReplyDelete

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