essays

One of the essays that definitely struck a cord with me was Virginia Wolfe's, "Death of a Moth". I especially enjoyed the juxatoposition of life and death throughout the piece. The birds, the moth, the sun, the men in the fields are all described in ways that are vivid and bring them to life as characters although they are never truly described. The way the narrator's life is put temporarily on hold while she watches the moth contrasts beautifully with the way the moth lives so fervently for what little time it has. Such a tiny creature, and yet such enormous life inside of it. And even in death, it never truly admitted defeat. It could not overcome death, but it surely did not have to leave the world with anything but the utmost of poise.

The other essay I enjoyed was Rider's "Three Voices". The format, the different points of view, it almost seemed like a stream of counciousness piece. In the three or four paragraphs she wrote, Rider was able to harness the tension and confusion of love, adultery, pain. Such things often occur in real life as well, and the mind does not process them with good grammar or well-thought-out sentences with appropriate diction, but rather facts, like bullet points, as Rider demonstrated with the quick changes in view and the words and definitions at the very end.