Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night And Margaret Atwood's

Margaret Atwood’s “Flowers” and Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” are similar in which both themes revolve around the death of a father. Both authors use symbols to strength what they are trying to say. For example, in Atwood’s poem, she compares the dying of her father to dying flowers. When she talks about cutting the dead stems of the flowers, she writes, “... [I] put them in a jar I brought from home, because they don’t have vases in this hotel for the ill.” She uses this line as a symbol for her father as he’s dying. Thomas also uses the same style when referencing the different men- good men, wise men, wild men, and grave men to symbolize that these men fought against death by also accepted it. For instance, in his …show more content…
For instance, in Atwood’s poem, the tone that she uses is more of one feeling sorrow and despair. In the second stanza, she writes, “he’s giving us up, he’s giving up everything but the breath going in and out of his diminished body;” The line makes the reader think she’s losing hope in her father’s recovery and he’s slowly dying. Moreover, the tone that she uses in this line distinctly contrasts with the tone of Thomas’s poem. The tone that Thomas uses in his poem has a sense opposition towards death. Repeatedly throughout his poem, he gives examples of men fighting death and urges his father to do that same. In the last stanza of the poem, he tells his father, “Curse, bless, me with your fierce tears, I pray. Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Thomas wants his father to fight death just like the other men. He wants his father to fight death because he wants his father to die fighting since he’s going to die anyway. The main differences between the tones of both poems is that Thomas uses words that expresses passion for opposition while Atwood uses words that expresses