How Does The Knight And The Moth End?

The conclusion was poetic, the moth lured the knight to a cliff and as the knight prepared to strike, the wind lifted them both and down, down they were pulled in slow motion. And rather than falling they were locked in a pretty dance, the knight’s armor glinting in the moonlight, the moth’s wings a vivid splash of color. And then the line, “They became what they were fighting against: a brief, flickering light in the dark.” It’s a conclusion that is both beautiful and unresolved, just as a lovely dream lingers long after one is awake.

This is kind of a late response, but the ending of The Knight and the Moth really hit me. It wasn’t a grand and exciting conclusion to the story of the two characters, but rather a quiet and even melancholy one. The story had followed the knight as he fought his way through hordes of the creatures in order to finally corner the last of them in the ruins of an old cathedral. As the last moth begged for its life, the knight hesitated, and in the end it was the creature’s whisper of a cycle of life and death that felled it. The creature’s wings dissolving into dust as he spoke was sufficient to bring the creature down, and the knight, sitting in the newly ruined cathedral, watched as the sun rose over the horizon. He dropped his armor as if it weighed nothing, and the last panel showed the knight sitting crosslegged on the rubble-strewn floor, staring off into space at the newly-risen sun.

It was a really haunting ending to the story, in part because I felt that in the end, neither of the characters had actually won. Rather, they had both been stuck in this endless cycle of behavior and in the end, the knight was no different than the moths he had spent his entire life fighting. The ambiguity of the ending was really what made it so powerful, and I have to re-read it from time to time in order to fully absorb the simple yet profound beauty of it. The story also included a number of really beautiful and insightful symbols and allusions, particularly with respect to light and decay, and every time that I re-read the story, I find new things in the simple and beautiful backgrounds that the author included.

One of my favorite aspects of the ending is how it turns the typical hero vs. villain story on its head. The moth is not evil – it is just a moth trying to survive. And the knight is not a hero. He is simply a very stubborn man. The ending leaves a lasting impression of the themes of light and decay, and I have returned to the story dozens of times to search for more background details that forecast the ending long before it occurs.

A great example of circular storytelling at the end of ‘The Knight and the Moth’. The Knight sets out to kill the Moth in the beginning, but is begging the creature to stay by the end. He attempts to smash the Moth in a smashed lantern in the early scenes, and is left to cradle the dying embers of it in the latter. The Moth spends its last days weaving a cocoon to put the Knight’s sword in. It’s left unclear what happens to the contents of the cocoon after that, but I suspect it’s one of those cases where destruction is also creation. What I found most impressive about this episode was the way the author played with scale. The Knight, who at the start of the story believes himself to be some kind of hero, is shown at the end to be a tiny speck against the background of the trees. Meanwhile, the Moth’s wings fill the sky. The impression given is of immense humility.