Poetry Analysis Essay - Dylan Thomas

Cynthia Moreno

English 495 ESM

Professor Wexler

10 February 2010

To Fight Death: The Emotional Confrontation

Certain poets write from personal experience and in many cases these experiences may be foreign to readers. Poet’s individual experience is vastly different from the experience of the reader, but there are some themes that are universal to everyone. A poems’ theme is the main idea that the poet is trying to convey. Poems about death are universal across all cultures, when translated they may lose certain messages, but the main idea will be clear. In Dylan Thomas poem, “Do not go gentle into that goodnight,” the poet faces the heartbreaking reality of a dying parent. In the beginning it is unclear whom the poem is about and it is not until the last stanza that the speakers says, “Father”. The speaker begs his father not to accept death quietly, but fight it. Although, speaker pleads for his father to rage against death, in Thomas’ poem “Do not go gentle into that good night,” the poem is not only a plea but also a coping mechanism that allowed the author to confront the death of a parent through poetry.

Thomas strategically put all the elements of this poem together to create a cohesive poetic form where the rhyme, meter, and stanzaic pattern all play an important role. “Do not go gentle into that good night,” is made up of a nineteen-line poem with five tercets and concluding quatrain making it a villanelle in closed form. The poem follows the rhyme scheme aba aba aba aba aba abaa. The meter of the poem is iambic pentameter, although iambic pentameter is commonly used, it suits the antithetical content of the poem. Even though this poem is in the traditional closed form of a villanelle the topic of the poem is not traditional. Traditionally, villanelles are used to talk about light, bucolic subjects that were peaceful and calm, but Thomas uses the villanelle in the antithetical form. Thomas employed the form, but choose to create a poem of “a raging against what is, an acknowledgement that life within natures consists of life and death, and be not just harmoniously repetitive but also full of sudden pain and occasional grieving” (Hochman). The poem is a statement that although life is filled with beauty and joy, and traditionally villanelles express that beauty in the poetic form, life is not always happy, but filled with sorrow and pain.

In analyzing the work one can see that the speaker of the poem is rebelling against nature. The speaker is angry and urges his father to fight “against the dying of the light” (Thomas). In the four middle stanzas of the poem, Thomas describes four different kind of men, wise, good, wild, and those near death. The speaker says, “Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight / blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, / Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (Thomas), which means that men near death can see clearly, “with blinding sight” and therefore they see everything and are happy. “The speaker of “Do not go gentle into that good night" is caught between his desire that his father continue to live, and live vividly, and his recognition that death is "that good night," perhaps inherently "good" because it is the order of life / nature, perhaps more immediately "good" as the agent for stopping pain, whether physical, mental, or spiritual” (Cyr). Thomas doesn’t really believe that death is “good”, his use of the word “good” is a paradox and it has multiple meanings. Thomas is directly referring to his father in the poem and he pleads to him to rebel against death. In reality Thomas was in such pain over his father’s inevitable death.

Everyone deals with death in different ways, some people mourn alone and others express their grief employing different outlets. The topic of death is universal with all walks of life. It is one of natures’ natural occurrences. Since death is universal, everyone can relate to it in one way or another, whether they have experienced loss of a loved one directly or not. In Dylan Thomas’ case he was forced to face the reality of an ailing father whose death would be upon them soon. Thomas was able to create the villanelle “Do not go gentle into that good night” in response to his sorrow to express his grieving. He asked his father to “rage against the dying of the light” and not give up his life peacefully, but rather with defiance and resistance. Thomas also showed his resistance within the antithetical poetic form of the villanelle. Rebel against what is and do not submit with ease, is a lesson learned through Dylan Thomas’ poetry.

Works Cited

Cyr, Marc D. ""Dylan Thomas's 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night': Through 'Lapis

Lazuli' to King Lear"" 1998. Literature Resource Center. Gale. Oviatt Library,

Northridge, Ca. 3 Feb. 2010 .

Hochman, Jhan. "An overview of "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night"" 1997. Literature

Resource Center. Gale. Oviatt Library, Northridge, Ca. 3 Feb. 2010.

Smith, Philip. 100 Best-Loved Poems. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. Print.