The Death of the Moth

Woolf incorporates symbolism in her essay by describing the things that the moth in the story with human-like characteristics. One could say that the moth was a symbol for a useless human who one would “pity for him”. The way the moth moved could be a symbol of struggle and life of a human-being by “dancing and zigzagging to show us the true nature of life”. And also when the author writes “Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved on strangely”, could be a symbol for perseverance, something that many people have lost or forgotten. The message of Woolf’s essay is maybe that, no matter how much work you do in life, how much strength it seems you have, how much you advance in life, with a move of a pencil (symbol for something that can cause death easily), your life can be ended quickly.