Many great authors that study human nature stood out the most during the period of time between the Imperialism and World War II. Among these authors were George Orwell and Virginia Woolf. Their study of the human nature is especially visible in certain short stories that each author respectively did. Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” and Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth.” In either of these stories the respective author uses animals to depict their complex ideas about the nature of life, men, and the whole world.
In the story “The Death of the Moth,” Virginia Woolf illustrates the universal struggle between life and death. She portrays in passing the valiance of the struggle, of the fight of life against death, but she determines as well the futility of this struggle. Virginia Woolf’s purpose in writing was to depict the patheticness of life in the face of death. Woolf’s conclusion, “death is stronger than I am,” provides the focus of her argument. Throughout the piece, she has built up her case, lead to reader emotional states its concept of the power of death. The piece would begi...
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Show MoreBoth Virginia Woolf and Annie Dillard are extremely gifted writers. Virginia Woolf in 1942 wrote an essay called The Death of the Moth. Annie Dillard later on in 1976 wrote an essay that was similar in the name called The Death of a Moth and even had similar context. The two authors wrote powerful texts expressing their perspectives on the topic of life and death. They both had similar techniques but used them to develop completely different views. Each of the two authors incorporate in their text a unique way of adding their personal experience in their essay as they describe a specific occasion, time, and memory of their lives. Woolf’s personal experience begins with “it was a pleasant morning, mid-September, mild, benignant, yet with a keener breath than that of the summer months” (Woolf, 1). Annie Dillard personal experience begins with “two summers ago, I was camping alone in the blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia” (Dillard, 1). Including personal experience allowed Virginia Woolf to give her own enjoyable, fulfilling and understandable perception of life and death. Likewise, Annie Dillard used the personal narrative to focus on life but specifically on the life of death. To explore the power of life and death Virginia Woolf uses literary tools such as metaphors and imagery, along with a specific style and structure of writing in a conversational way to create an emotional tone and connect with her reader the value of life, but ultimately accepting death through the relationship of a moth and a human. While Annie Dillard on the other hand uses the same exact literary tools along with a specific style and similar structure to create a completely different perspective on just death, expressing that death is how it comes. ...
Every day, each individual will look back on decisions he or she have made and mature from those experiences. Though it takes time to realize these choices, the morals and knowledge obtained from them are priceless. In George Orwell’s nonfictional essay, “Shooting an Elephant”, a young Orwell was stationed in Burma for the British imperial forces, tasked to deal with an elephant who destroyed various parts of the village Moulmein while its owner was away. Backed by second thoughts and a crowd of thousands, he finds himself shooting the elephant and reflecting that it was not justified; however, it was a choice pushed by his duty and the people. Written with a fusion of his young and old self’s outlook on shooting the elephant, Orwell’s essay is a sensational read that captivates his audience and leaves them questioning his decision.
The relationship between life and death is explored in Woolf’s piece, “The Death of a Moth.” Woolf’s own epiphany is presented in her piece; she invites her reader, through her stylistic devices, to experience the way in which she realized what the meaning of life and death meant to her. Woolf’s techniques allow her audience to further their own understanding of death and encourages them consider their own existence.
The Iceberg Principle that Hemingway is so fond of, has already given rise to many discussions over the years. Giving away only a tip of it, Hemingway leaves us behind with a great amount of mystery in his stories.
Insects may be the bane of some people’s existence, but the creatures are truly strong globes of energy, going about their lives, flitting to and fro. Thoreau and Woolf both captured this essential spirit in their writing. In “Battle of the Ants” and “The Death of the Moth,” both writers observe other life forms, but the way in which they perceive the insects struggles vastly differs. According to an online biography, Thoreau’s exposure to transcendentalism as well as his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson both shaped his writing to emphasize “the importance of empirical thinking and of spiritual matters over the physical world,” whereas Virginia Woolf’s parents raised her to be free thinking which resulted
literary works “Why I Hunt” and “Am I Blue?”. In Both works, animals play a large part in the lives of authors
Everyone fears it, it is in a many ways a monster, it takes away loved ones and can utterly crush one’s soul. This murderous force is known as death. Death surrounds many people including the infamous author Edgar Allen Poe. Poe channels his experiences with death through the speaker’s relationship of a raven in his illustrious poem “The Raven”. In “The Raven”, Poe chronicles the speaker’s changing attitude, from amazement and trust to realization of its inherit nature, towards the raven through his use of literary devices.
Edgar Allan Poe, an infamous writer from the mid 19th century, is well known for his works which incorporate a dark, terror aspect to them. Edgar Allan Poe’s philosophy of death has a more illustrious role, than his tragic life. Poe’s harsh childhood memories carry through and reflect his writing throughout his adulthood. He expresses his pain and sorrow through his writing. In “The Mask of the Red Death” and “The Raven,” Poe uses emotions of terror to highlight that death is inescapable.
No matter how hard we fight, death always wins. Like the moth in the story, people struggle with something all their life long, but at the end they all are facing the death. It’s an inevitable fact: “death is stronger than I am” (196), Woolf states. Basically, she says that we are choosing how to live – fighting or not, with someone’s help or without – the end is the same. It is pessimistic, but it’s the sad truth of life.
The subject of death is one that many have trouble talking about, but Virginia Woolf provides her ideas in her narration The Death of the Moth. The moth is used as a metaphor to depict the constant battle between life and death, as well as Woolf’s struggle with chronic depression. Her use of pathos and personification of the moth helps readers develop an emotional connection and twists them to feel a certain way. Her intentional use of often awkward punctuation forces readers to take a step back and think about what they just read. Overall, Woolf uses these techniques to give her opinion on existence in general, and reminds readers that death is a part of life.
The struggle for life is often seen as awkward and pathetic, such as the moth demonstrating its ardent desire for survival; through this narrow lens, death can be seen as an end to the chronic sufferings that life brings. However, rather than one force overpowering another as in “The Death of the Moth”, life and death are indeed simultaneous and complimentary components within the entire span of existence. They are not two isolated variables in which their sole interaction is that of death taking life, and life handing itself over to the dominant power; on the contrary, they are two variables that are dependent on one another for survival. Woolf fails to see that although all living beings die or are eventually eradicated, there are always a successors, and this constant balance is what perpetuates the subsistence of the cycle of life itself.
In the essay “The Death of the Moth” by Virginia Woolf there are meanings behind what Woolf says. Woolf uses Diction, Syntax, and Symbolism to set the tone and theme. The tone is hopeless and depressed and the theme is that death is inevitable. In “The Death of the Moth” Woolf observes the death of a moth giving a distinct description of the death and relating it to herself.
George Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” deals with the nature of a human’s identity and ego. The story is set during the British colonization of Burma and discusses the ordeals of an English police officer stationed in the colony, who hates both his job and the people whom he polices. He faces many challenging decisions that put him in a place where he must either follow his own beliefs or fall to the will of the citizens of Burma. Throughout the story the officer is stuck with the decision of whether to do what he thinks is right, in order to preserve his ego or to do what the majority wants, in order to preserve his public identity. This decision is one that transcends Orwell’s essay and is faced throughout life by all people.
In the essay ?Shooting an Elephant? by George Orwell, the author uses metaphors to represent his feelings on imperialism, the internal conflict between his personal morals, and his duty to his country. Orwell demonstrates his perspectives and feelings about imperialism.and its effects on his duty to the white man?s reputation. He seemingly blends his opinions and subjects into one, making the style of this essay generally very simple but also keeps it strong enough to merit numerous interpretations. Orwell expresses his conflicting views regarding imperialism throughout the essay by using three examples of oppression and by deliberatly using his introspection on imperialism.
Orwell?s extraordinary style is never displayed well than through ?Shooting an Elephant,? where he seemingly blends his style and subject into one. The story deals with a tame elephant that all of a sudden turns bad and kills a black Dravidian coolie Indian. A policeman kills this elephant through his conscience because the Indians socially pressurized him greatly. He justified himself as he had killed elephant as a revenge for coolie.