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Compare And Contrast Annie Dillard And The Death Of The Moth

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Authors Annie Dillard and Virginia Woolf are female writers who wrote about their life crises in an essay called ¨The Death of The Moth¨. These two texts are written in a similar fashion as they both include a message to their audience through the life of a moth. The messages that these two texts create for the audience have an everlasting and impactful effect. Dillard, whose crisis is deciding whether she should continue being a writer, has a different way of appealing to her audience than Woolf does. Woolf had a crisis about whether or not she wanted to live as a woman in the early 1900s. In both essays, ¨The Death of The Moth¨ by Annie Dillard and Vriginia Woolf, they both relate by using a moth to explain their crises but differ when it comes to their message and tone. …show more content…

Both moths represent a symbol. In order to get her message across, Dillard uses the moth as a symbol for writers. She claims that the moth enlarged ¨the circle of light in the clearing and creating out of the darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater.¨ The enlarging of the flame in the candle acts as a symbol to how writers inspire their audience. While on the other hand, Woolf claims that her moth is a day moth. This symbolizes how Woolf felt trapped in between the male writers of society and females. Both texts also write their essays because of how they encountered the moth. Both Dillard and Woolf were sitting and reading while they crossed paths with the moth. The encounter with the moth served as the exigence for both writers. As well as telling the moth's story, both authors tell their stories through the moth. Instead of explaining their lives, they explained the life of a moth in hopes to appeal to a wider audience. Furthermore, Dillard and Woolf both end their stories with the death of each of their

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She describes the moth’s life as pathetic. Dillard also personifies the moth like Woolf did by relating to the moth as empty and hollow as life can sometimes be. She is very detailed in describing the moth’s dorsal curve of thorax and abdomen, and a smooth pair of cerci.

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In the auto-biographical excerpt from Ornithological Biographies by John James Audubon, he depicts his intriguing encounter with the wild pigeons of Ohio, while in Annie Dillard's engaging excerpt from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, she illustrates her thought-provoking observation of the Starling roost migration. Both writers had an overriding passion that showed through in the diction, tone, and syntax of their pieces. Because of these different infatuations both authors use different literary devices that match their feelings of how they view the birds and how the birds affected them. The authors were very different in their tonality of the excerpts, as in how Audubon was a scientist studying the life of birds, but Dillard had a passion for the arts. Therefore both writers had a very different style of writing.

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"Living Like Weasels", an essay by Annie Dillard, interprets the author 's encounter with a weasel and her precise determination on the way a human lives by choice against the weasel 's life of necessity. While the weasel fights for survival, Dillard infers that the weasel has much more freedom than a human who lives by choice. In "Living Like Weasels", the weasel represents free will;"the weasel has no ties to responsibility as humans do". Although the weasel lives out of necessity and survival, Dillard assumes that, unlike humans, the weasel truly has freedom.

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In spite of the fact that the Polyphemus moth “[heaves] himself down the asphalt driveway...unwavering” (Dillard), in the end, death will claim the moth, just not yet. Woolf’s moth, however, passes away in mid-September, Unlike the Polyphemus moth, Woolf’s moth is given assistance by the narrator ’s pencil but still “could [not]...raise himself” (Woolf). The contrasting perspectives of the different works reveal the innocence and desperation during the beginning of a struggle and the wise acceptance and defeat at the end of life. Dillard’s subjective connection with the Polyphemus moth is emotional while Woolf’s intellectual objective examination of the moth’s death is

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While having the same premise and similar titles, both of these pieces impacted the authors in very different ways which can be shown through their diction, tone, and structure. Dillard and Woolf are both facing hardships and deep rooted problems they are looking for answers for. Through Dillards diction it is revealed that she has trouble finding her purpose in life and dealing with the overwhelming hardships of being a writer. This is shown through her diction especially when describing the actual death of the moth. In one paragraph she graphically describes all aspects of the moth as it was dying with phrases such as “Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper” and “her six legs clawed, curled, blackened, and ceased, disappearing utterly.”

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2003 #3 Birds, something we see almost on a daily basis, one here and another one over there, but how many times in our lives will we be able to witness tens of thousands of birds flying over the sky. John James Audubon and Annie Dillard describes their own personal experiences with massive flocks of bird. Both author takes time to help the reader visualize the grandness and coordination of the birds. However with contrasting diction and syntax utilized by the authors, the two articles are able to have different effect on the audience after finished reading them.

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The speaker at first acknowledges that it is “strange” for him to be acting afraid of this woman, as most men would most likely be able to at least face a person who has wronged them. The speaker tries to justify himself with the metaphors of the fly and mouse, but in doing so also likens himself to two creatures that seem weak and helpless. Even though in the beginning of the poem the speaker seems to acknowledge that he is acting unusual, it seems as though he has simply had bad luck in dealing with women. By the end of the poem the speaker’s attitude is revealed to be more than this though, as he seems to claim that he could not help but being attracted to this woman, and that it was completely her fault that he was hurt. This is the complex attitude of the speaker: he may realize deep down that it is mostly his fault that he has allowed himself to be hurt, and that he is tempted to let it happen again, but the speaker has convinced himself that all his pain has been caused by this woman instead, allowing him to preserve his image of himself as a strong

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By using the word moth, which conjures up an image of an annoying creatures, Fitzgerald shows that the parties are more of a nuisance than welcomed guests. Furthermore, the people seem to blend in with each other and seem more like a “sea-change of faces and voices

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This inspired Dillard to continue writing because even though she had no motivation, she was able to find it through the strength of the moth. While both Woolf and Dillard center their essays around a moth, the moths signify very different things for both of

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She argues that all living beings are subject to the same cycle of birth, growth, and decay and that ultimately, death is the only certainty. By using the metaphor of the moth's struggle to escape the window, Woolf highlights

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The diction and tone in Woolf’s essay affects her message as it was melancholy and calm. The diction was clear and understandable to ensure that the audience could understand her message, rather than try and decipher large incoherent words. Woolf also uses many words with negative connotations, but takes a neutral attitude to the subject. At the beginning of the essay Woolf 's tone is very hopeful, but as the essay progresses it turns dark and somber. At the beginning Woolf used phrasing such as “ Pleasant morning” (Woolf 5) and “enormous energy of the world”(Woolf 24) .

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