Poem Explication: and Death Shall Have No Dominion
Poem Explication:
And Death Shall Have No Dominion
Poem Explication: And Death Has No Dominion
Since the publication of his first volume of poetry, Eighteen Poems, Dylan Thomas explored the relationship between life and death. The devastating effects of World War I, the crushing economic consequences of the Treaty of Versailles, and the self-described Great Depression shaped Dylan Thomas’s childhood and subject matter and caused him to cherish the delicate balance of life like few others, giving his unique perspective great influence when coupled with his flowing writing style. In his first published poem “And Death Shall Have No Dominion,” Dylan Thomas utilizes sound imagery, diction, and allusion among other poetic devices to convey a multitude of tones and bring across the theme that life has supremacy over death and is eternal. The three stanzas are each poems of themselves, each holding a different message with the same theme. In this work, Thomas grasps the idea that “death shall have no dominion,” an allusion to Romans about Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and explores its positive and negative implications (King James Version, Romans 6:9). The title bears the full meaning of the poem, with each subsequent line elaborating on its deep dynamics (Wilson). In the first stanza the speaker exudes a confident and grateful attitude towards eternal life concurrent with the traditional Christian views, using scansion, allusions, and word choice to do so. In Christianity the righteous dead are taken from the Earth and become one with the Holy Trinity, similar to the speaker’s comment, “ dead men naked they shall be one / [w]ith the man in the wind and the west moon.” The man in the wind that all worthy souls are fused with is a reference to the Holy Spirit as described in the book of John, “You hear [the wind’s] sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). The “west moon” could be a
And Death Shall Have No Dominion
Poem Explication: And Death Has No Dominion
Since the publication of his first volume of poetry, Eighteen Poems, Dylan Thomas explored the relationship between life and death. The devastating effects of World War I, the crushing economic consequences of the Treaty of Versailles, and the self-described Great Depression shaped Dylan Thomas’s childhood and subject matter and caused him to cherish the delicate balance of life like few others, giving his unique perspective great influence when coupled with his flowing writing style. In his first published poem “And Death Shall Have No Dominion,” Dylan Thomas utilizes sound imagery, diction, and allusion among other poetic devices to convey a multitude of tones and bring across the theme that life has supremacy over death and is eternal. The three stanzas are each poems of themselves, each holding a different message with the same theme. In this work, Thomas grasps the idea that “death shall have no dominion,” an allusion to Romans about Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, and explores its positive and negative implications (King James Version, Romans 6:9). The title bears the full meaning of the poem, with each subsequent line elaborating on its deep dynamics (Wilson). In the first stanza the speaker exudes a confident and grateful attitude towards eternal life concurrent with the traditional Christian views, using scansion, allusions, and word choice to do so. In Christianity the righteous dead are taken from the Earth and become one with the Holy Trinity, similar to the speaker’s comment, “ dead men naked they shall be one / [w]ith the man in the wind and the west moon.” The man in the wind that all worthy souls are fused with is a reference to the Holy Spirit as described in the book of John, “You hear [the wind’s] sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). The “west moon” could be a