Reading Journal | "The Death of the Moth" Virginia Woolf

The story "The Death of the Moth" Woolf uses many types of modes but the most effective mode she uses is Description. Woolf utilizes extremely specific words instead of using vague descriptions. Woolf begins her essay with a general description. It begins when Woolf describes the day of the moth and the narrator surroundings, using very vivid description of imagery. The narrator is watching the moth as it attempts to the leave the room by the closed window. She states "Yet, because he was so small, and so simple a form of the energy that was rolling in at the open window and driving its way through so many narrow and intricate corridors in my own brain and in those of other human beings..." Also throughout the story, she pays close attention to every detail of the moth and the detail of the moth's movements. During the description of the moth, she writes, "Nevertheless, the present specimen, with his narrow hay-coloured wings, fringed with a tassel of the same colour, seemed to be content with life." Woolf expresses throughout the text how the death of the moth made her wonder about and question the moth’s death. After the death of the moth, Woolf expressed her curiousness of how death can overpower a person and take full control of a situation.