Insignificance

In "The Death of a Moth" by Virginia Woolf, death is just a simple concept as she views it. She believes that even the death of a moth, which may seem so insignificant to most, is a powerful thing. Woolf uses many extended metaphors to display a type of cage that life seems to hold on some. The metaphor of a "vast net with thousands of black knots" made of rooks illustrates the restraint that something like depression can have on someone, like a net cast over them, disabling them (Woolf 696). Woolf herself was a sufferer of depression and committed suicide before the piece was even published. The moth was also used as a metaphor for herself as finally "[her] struggle was over" (697). The rooks also rose and fell from the treetops to the vast sky like waves ebbing and flowing, similar to the way her depression caused uncontrollable sadness or happiness.  Like the moth she views herself as someone who is just out of reach of help. She describes her life through the metaphor of the window. Like the moth she can see the world continuing and thriving through the clear window, however she is held back from thriving herself through restraint of the glass. Even the smallest death is not insignificant.