Dylan Thomas wrote "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" in 1951 in response to emotions he was feeling about his dying father. Thomas uses villanelle, tone, alliteration, and conceit to craft a masterful work, that gradually progresses encompassing the emotion and rage he is feeling, while maintaining control through diction and form.
Thomas's father was an outgoing military man most of his life. Seeing his father fading into non-existence without the passion and vigor Thomas associated with him troubled him. Thomas wrote the poem as a plea to his father to hold on or at least exuberate some of the life Thomas once saw in him. Thomas never showed his father the poem, but it is clear the poem is stemmed from the memory of his passing.
Thomas utilized the villanelle form flawlessly. The rhyme scheme of "night" and …show more content…
"day" throughout the piece symbolically represents death and life. The work is even more confined as Thomas maintains a similar beat and number of syllables per line during the entire poem. The simple structure and repetition of key lines progresses the emotional tone of the poem. The enjambment, "Do not go gentle into that good night" Rage, rage against the dying of the light", repeated throughout gives the poem its control and supports the thoughts within.
Alliteration is used in the refrain "Do not go gently into that good night" the strong "G" sound gives it more imperativeness and moreover reinforces the power of the refrain.
Thomas's poem utilizes conceit superior to any work I've ever examined. Thomas's complex metaphors in each stanza have an individual as well as common theme. "Though wise men at their end know dark is right" (4), "Because their words had forked no lightning they" (5) is a metaphor for the meaninglessness of the things the "wise men" had said when death is at their door. Lightning could symbolize a flash of life in death, as a common metaphor throughout the poem is light is life and darkness is death, which is expressed as day and night.
Stanza three references light again by using the word "bright". "Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay" (8) could be a metaphor comparing "frail deeds" to the resonance of a wave in water, how it impacts its surroundings for a brief moment, but then is gone forever with no memory. The deeds done by "good men" will be remembered less and less until there are no longer any
waves.
The fourth stanza is more difficult to understand, but could be a metaphor for wasting your life, learning nothing, only seeking enjoyment, but then realizing to late in life that you don't live forever. That no matter how long you live or how much enjoy life, it will never be enough.
I interpret the fifth stanza as a verbal irony in which "blinding sight" an oxymoron represents an epiphany right before death. Line fourteen is referring to Thomas's father going blind. Thomas is saying that whether or not he could see, he could still perceive the world and be happy. It could also be about coming to terms with the meaning of life.
In the final stanza Thomas talks specifically to his father. He is begging his father to show some kind of emotion, some kind of life, just show him that he still lives through joy or pain, to show him he has not already given up.
The theme throughout the poem is the insignificance of the life you have lived and the shift to the importance of living itself. Thomas's strict form, unique metaphor's and rising emotional tone, gradually progressed the work to express the idea that the impending end should be met with vigor of life and light rather than fading into darkness without as much as a glimmer.