Compare And Contrast Annie Dillard And The Death Of The Moth

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.

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