TOW #9 - The Death of a Moth - Virginia Woolf (Written)

Virginia Woolf was an acclaimed novelist throughout her life, which started in 1882 and ended in 1941 by suicide. She suffered with mental illness her whole life, and it eventually ended it. Her essay, The Death of a Moth, was published a year after her death in 1942. It is a short essay whose topic is, well, the death of a moth that Woolf happened to see on her window. Whilst that is the obvious, first-level subject, the true subject is mortality in general. Taking into account the fact that this was written shortly before she died, it is easier to see that this is an essay about mortality. She uses her description of a moth as a metaphor for the life of a human being with bipolar disorder with stunning accuracy. At first, she describes the moth as a pitiable being, after watching it flutter about for a while, she realizes that it has none of the freedoms that she would have imagined it having before considering its significance. This symbolizes a sort of "death of innocence" that comes to a lot of people when bipolar sets in around age 18 for most people who have it. She then describes it standing still for a while, not really moving, struggling a bit against some force that she can't see. This represents the depressive phases that are encountered by sufferers of bipolar disorder. She then describes the death of the moth, her realization that it isn't moving because it's trying not to die. She documents its short time spent struggling to get up and continue moving, but then interprets its motions and eventual ceasing as an acceptance of death, which is what many bipolar sufferes eventually succumb to, Overall, given some background knowledge, this is effectively a suicide note from Woolf, and it communicates that quite effectively through the use of a dying moth as a metaphor for the life of a bipolar sufferer, probably being herself.