Dylan Thomas Research Paper

I. RESEARCH Dylan Marlais Thomas was born on October 27, 1914, in the city of Swansea, South Wales. Growing up, he tended to skip out of school to read on his own due to his neurosis. He was introduced to poetry by his father, David John Thomas, an English professor. At a young age, he read all of D.H. Lawrence 's work. Poets such as Gerard Manley Hopkins, W.B. Yeats, and Edgar Allen Poe inspired him to use rhythmic ballads like theirs in his own work.
At 16, Thomas dropped out of school to become a reporter for a local newspaper, which he pursued until he was 18. He then quit his job to write poetry full-time. During his late teens, Thomas wrote more than half of his published poems. In 1934, at the age of twenty, he published his first …show more content…
Unlike other poets living of the early 1900s, writing in such a romantic style was outdated and looked down upon in a sense. However, Thomas made it work. Three major romantic elements were used in his poems: auditory effects, imagery, and exploration of the nature of the universe. The use of verbal, color, and visual imagery was really what defined his writing style. It is one of a kind. In Thomas’ color imagery, he describes his young days as being “happy as the grass is green”. And in “Do not go gentle into that good night”, he writes “their words had forked no lightning they”. To be able to put such an image in the reader 's head was a valuable talent Thomas possessed. Death was often used as a symbol in Thomas’ poems. In “Do not go gentle into that good night.”, the poem is about fighting and resisting death. Although death is usually a very saddening topic in many poems, the tone that Thomas writes it in is not particularly negative. His religious views influenced the way he wrote about life and death. Thomas did not seem to fear death, but insisted in poems such as “Do not go gentle into that good night.” and in “And Death Shall Have No Dominion” that it should be fought and there should be a struggle to avoid