The Moths: Thoughts and Themes

"The Moths" by Helena Viramontes traces the path of a girl's journey into a woman, day to night and birth into death (and rebirth again). The story shows themes of female adolescence in a girl pained by her family who points out all of her flaws. It goes through the (verbal) abuse of this young girl and how it affects the three generations of woman.

Love and the power to heal is another theme. This is displayed through the grandmother's relationship with the pained granddaughter.

To be completely honest, my first thoughts on this story were. . . not good. I honestly found a lot of Viramontes' symbols odd and a bit creepy. After we talked about them in class I got a better understanding of why she used these symbols in her story (but I still think parts were really weird; ie. the moths and the bath scene).

After getting a better grip on why she used these odd symbols I got to focus more on the story and the themes I mentioned before. I got to thinking on my own life and I can really connect with this story. I'm not gonna go into much detail (I mean, this is the internet after all-I don't need the whole world to know my business). But, I have always looked to my Mawmaw for help. She's been a best friend to me for as long as I can remember- if my family had not had it's problems that it has I probably wouldn't be as close to her, I can't even imagine a life without that closeness; I really don' t know what I would do if I didn't have that relationship with her and I can see that in the granddaughter-grandmother relationship in "The Moths" as well.

Because of this overall I find "The Moths" to be an interesting story. The connections between my life and the main character's life almost outweigh the creepiness of the odd symbolism. I think it would be more effective if Viramontes had used "more normal" symbols because parts of her story were so distracting (to me, at least) that it almost took something away from the story.