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Virginia Woolf's On The Death Of A Moth

381 Words2 Pages

Author and modernist, Virginia Woolf, was born on the 25th of January 1882. She lived through the literary period called “The Stream of Consciousness”. In her essay, On the Death of a Moth, Woolf portrays the inevitability of death, and the idea that in the battle of life and death there is no chance of winning. She utilizes devices such as metaphors and tone, and appeals to pathos. Throughout the piece, the tone is skillfully reshaped in order to appeal to the reader. Due to the tone, the reader feels emotionally connected to the moth in which they hope that the moth may live, only to have their notion crushed when it finally does die. Woolf uses diction to not only portray the moth as “pathetic” and “frail”, but to foreshadow the moth’s

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