In this essay the author uses different methods of personification of insects to describe the same thing - human nature. While Thoreau vividly depicts a large-scale battle between two ant species in his yard, Virginia Woolf gives a detailed and intimate account of the short life and death of a daytime moth. The difference between these two writers isn't simply style or choice of vocabulary (which is intended to set an appropriate mood in the two essays), but is mainly in their focus on certain parts of insect behavior to relay different perspectives on and ideas about human nature. What th…
