Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Analysis

“Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night” is a poem written by Dylan Thomas at the time when his father was at the brink of death. The piece is actually a villanelle where it consist of six stanzas, each with three lines except for the sixth stanza which has four lines. The rhymes on the first until fifth stanzas are aba, aba, aba, aba, aba. While, abaa is the rhyme for the last quatrain stanza. Thomas died a few months after his father, it is believed that this poem was written by him especially for his father. It’s said that Thomas was an alcoholic and it was deemed that the cause of his death was because of the obsession and also it was accentuated with the grief he felt for his father approaching death. The form of the poem is elegy whereby
Through the descriptions, we can identify the state of mind of the poet. The first one is wise men. Although the poet speaker said that wise men know that death is a definite event to take place in every life, he implore them not to give up and fight for survival of life. The second kind of men the poet speaker talks about are good men. The poet speaker described good men as ‘frail’ and the deeds that they have done are appreciated by others. However, the third line from stanza one, ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light’ is repeated on the third, fifth, and sixth stanzas. This repetition is to accentuate the poet speaker’s state of mind. The poet speaker insisted that people should have the will to live and do not succumb to wait for death to
‘Sun’ and ‘meteors’ are also used by the poet to symbolize light. The poet appears to be saying that the light of life is as strong and bright as the sun and meteors, thus one does not simply gave all of it up to death. The poet speaker describes death as ‘dying of light’, ‘dark’, and ‘good night’. In other words, the poet used descriptive language to light and death, and made the light as a symbol of life or being alive. The poet also intensely expressing that the ailing and seniors instead of submitting in mute to the impending death, they should fight it and strive to