In reading the Death of the Moth, I found a broad choice of rhetorical devices that make this story increasingly powerful yet straightforward. Despite the fact that this story is fairly short, Virginia Woolf, the author, is still capable to write such a detailed story with a forceful type of metaphor. A device that Woolf uses in her story that I caught right away was parallelism, which occurred when I read, “That was all he could do, in spite of the size of the downs, the width of the sky, the far-off smoke of houses, and the romantic voice, now and then, of a steamer out at sea.” (Woolf 2). When I continued to read the story, Woolf used an impressive sentence regarding a hyperbole which is introduced in this following sentence, “One could …show more content…
For example, she used it in this following sentence: “It 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” (Woolf 3). This particular sentence that is formed to make a simile was used to emphasize the moth itself and the monumental quantity of vitality it has. Lastly in the reading, Life, death and the moth are all personified, and also by the incorporation due to human attributes. This story has given temporary and transparent meaning of life in such a simple way towards the metaphor of a struggled creature. Woolf’s comprehensibility and attributes continues to keep her story from becoming distressful. Virginia Woolf created her story to be meaningful on an occasion that most people would tend to overlook as a whole unless you really listen and understand what she is truly trying to say in her metaphor.
When I finally read “The Death of a Moth” by Annie Dillard it was a completely different reading of course than the one Woolf had created. The spacing was of course a major difference by the way she formatted her story and also it was portrayed differently. I found Virginia Woolf’s story to be very easy to find the rhetorical device she is trying to fulfill rather than Dillard’s