Death is the subject in both Woolf’s essay “The Death of the Moth” and Petrunkevitch’s essay “The Spider and the Wasp”, yet each writer’s approach is significantly different. Woolf portrays death in a more meaningful, vague manner, whereas Petrunkevitch was very straightforward and precise, leaving very little to the imagination. However, not only do their tones differ, but their purposes do as well. By the end of reading “The Death of the Moth”, one can quickly understand that although Woolf is literally talking about the death of an insect, she is figuratively trying to relate these insects to us as humans. Unlike Woolf, Petrunkevitch is not looking for a deeper meaning behind anything but is describing to us the powerful relationship between …show more content…
Woolf describes the moth, the subject of the story, as an “insignificant little moth” (Woolf 2) and numerous times mentions her pity for him, making any of his actions look pathetic. As she describes the moth, her tone shifts three times throughout the entire essay, from pity to wonder and lastly to resignation. The reasons for her shifts are due to the narrator’s observations of the moth as it struggles to fight death and the inevitable. First, the moth is just a small little creature in an enormous world, so we pitied the moth. Then, the moth was resilient in its efforts to fight against fate, so the moth amazed us. However, because the moth was so insignificant and powerless “against a power of such magnitude” (Woolf 2), he had no choice but to give in and admit that indeed “death is stronger that I [the moth] am” (Woolf 3), so we in turn gave up just as the moth did. Woolf’s ability to connect the reader to the moth and compare his struggles with those of their own is incredible, but it also sheds light on her own perspective on the value of life, importance of trying, and the power of