Discussion Guide: “Moth” and “Frog”
George C. Beresford/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
For July’s “Book” Club, I decided to experiment with making a discussion guide to help us explore some of the larger and more interesting themes in Virginia Woolf’s 1941 essay “The Death of the Moth” and Anne Fadiman’s “Frog,” which appeared in the March 2023 issue of Harper’s.
I’m recreating the discussion guide here for anyone interested in reading these two essays together.
The Essays
“The Death of the Moth” by Virginia Woolf
In his editorial note for The Death of the Moth, and Other Essays, Leonard Woolf (Virginia Woolf’s husband) writes that Virginia intended to publish another volume of The Common Reader in 1941 or 1942, but she drowned herself in the River Ouse before this new volume was completed. She left behind enough material to fill three full volumes, so Leonard decided to choose the best from among these items to include in this posthumous collection. Woolf was known to go through several drafts of a piece of writing before it was published; what’s unique about “Moth” is that it’s an early draft she didn’t get to revise. How does this knowledge impact how we should read and experience this essay?
“Frog” by Anne Fadiman
Fadiman is an essayist and reporter. I read her small and delightful book, Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, a few years ago and fell in love with her writing style—there’s something so blunt yet warm about it. Notice the subtitle of her book: “Confessions of a Common Reader.” Is this a nod to Virginia Woolf? Fadiman has said that she would have Woolf as a guest at her imaginary dinner party, and she also cited Woolf’s “Moth” essay as the inspiration for “Frog.” Can we think of “Frog” as a metaphorical final draft of Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth”?
The Themes
Universals & Particulars
Virginia Woolf opens her essay with a generalization about day moths: “Moths that fly by day are not properly to be called moths.” What can we notice about the shift in tone when she begins to focus on the “present specimen” (or particular moth)? What does this indicate about the nature of our relationship with other creatures?
The reverse seems to be the case in Fadiman’s essay: “You might be wondering: What kind of frog was he? I didn’t. By both habit and temperament, I am drawn to research like a frog to a Stage Two Nugget, but I never researched Bunky.” Fadiman never thought much of her pet (particular) frog until a student reminded her that she had a “Grow-a-Frog.” She then does some research and learns that Bunky was an African clawed frog with “cousins frog-kicking around the wetlands of sub-Saharan Africa.” How does this knowledge of the universal, of Bunky’s species, change how Fadiman thinks and feels about Bunky?
The Other
Both Woolf and Fadiman do some “othering” of the particular creatures they’re observing. What are some examples of this? What is it about a frog and a moth that makes it easy to see them as separate and alien?
On the flip side, what are some moments where Woolf and Fadiman are able to empathize with the moth and the frog? How do they do this?
Do these acts of othering and empathizing come from the same feeling: That the strangeness of life can create such pathetic creatures that are only able to experience such small pockets of life?
Confined Space
Fadiman’s essay emphasizes the many containers Bunky has occupied since he was a tadpole. One of his last containers was “a shallow shelf in the freezer door, just above the icemaker.” Fadiman even writes that “it was intended to hold a frog.” What do we think Fadiman is doing by talking about the changing spaces Bunky occupied throughout his life with the family?
Woolf observes not just the window pane the moth flying around, but his small and simple form. She pities his shape, finds him pathetic, but ultimately acknowledges “what he could do he did.” Is Woolf just talking about the moth? Is she thinking about herself and the space she occupies? The space we all occupy?
Approaching Death
What do Fadiman and Woolf learn about death from Bunky and the moth?
Let’s unpack this passage from Woolf’s essay:
“One could only watch the extraordinary efforts made by those tiny legs against an oncoming doom which could, had it chosen, have submerged an entire city, not merely a city, but masses of human beings; nothing, I knew, had any chance against death. Nevertheless after a pause of exhaustion the legs fluttered again. It was superb this last protest, and so frantic that he succeeded at last in righting himself. One’s sympathies, of course, were all on the side of life. Also, when there was nobody to care or to know, this gigantic effort on the part of an insignificant little moth, against a power of such magnitude, to retain what no one else valued or desired to keep, moved one strangely. Again, somehow, one saw life, a pure bead. I lifted the pencil again, useless though I knew it to be. But even as I did so, the unmistakable tokens of death showed themselves.”
Consider the context Woolf was writing in: The threat of Fascism, specifically Nazism. Was Woolf doomed?