Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Analysis

In the poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night,” Dylan Thomas chooses a villanelle for its repetitive structure, creating a vigorous feeling to fight against the inevitability of death. Thomas also uses his language to create a sense of regret as one comes close to the end of his life. A villanelle has a very unique form. One of the main features of this type of poem are two lines that repeat often throughout the piece. Because of this repetition, one of the most important lines, “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light”, forces a sense of strength onto the reader. Thomas implies that he his pushing his father, who is resting upon his death bed, to “rage” or fight for his life. The upsetting truth that his father is going to die infuriates him, so he wants him to fight for every last breath he can conjure. The other repetitive line that Thomas uses, “Do not go gentle into …show more content…
Although this poem is about fighting to live your life, Thomas turns it around on himself in an ironic way. Throughout this piece he urges his father to live, yet Thomas implicitly tells us that he is going to die. He does not explicitly say it in the text but rather through the rhyme scheme and, again, the repetitiveness. Knowing that the villanelle style ends with the first and third lines from the beginning stanza, which are the two lines mentioned above, the poem is technically over once it starts. Because those two lines both represent death, ending the poem with them tells us that his father is going to die, and that one day he will too. Thomas also uses the rhyme scheme, in a more technical way, to represent death. The simple ABA rhyme throughout the poem doesn’t show much, but knowing that it finishes with a couplet signifies that the rhyme suddenly ends, hence the death. This final couplet morbidly shows that everything, including life,