Do Not Go Gentle

Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” is a nineteen line poem divided into five three-line stanzas and a sixth stanza with four lines which is written in a very specific form “the villanelle” and depicts a speaker who is really emotional about his father. One of the things that concerns him most is that his father should embrace life to the very end although he knows that death is something no one can avoid. The speaker on the other hand argues for the stillness that death provides, which this poem tries to show by imploring resistance in the face of death. Thomas uses this poem to talk about the resistance to death by four different men of which all of them where meant to live a satisfactory life but they were …show more content…
The speaker urges the old ones in the second line to resist death in every way possible “Old age should burn and rave at close of day” (2). The question of death in old age is brought up, but the main focus is the grief and selfishness of the speaker facing the fact that his father would soon be leaving him. “Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight” (13) the speaker acknowledges the pain his father’s ill health is causing that is he talks about his father’s blindness but beseech his father to ignore blindness “Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay” (14) …show more content…
The poem also has few conjunctions, words are mostly connected with commas “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (3) “Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray” (17) which means there are more stressed word in the poem, which makes the poem have an intense rhythm. Finally the poem could be said to be a poem about the joy and sadness that comes with life. It focuses on the sadness basically as those we love the most pass on. The poem was written specifically for the speaker’s father it is bitterer with the emotional words used to convey the message, the poem also starts with intensity especially the first verse. The speaker acceptance of his father’s death and forever rest are not considered in the rage, the death of his father blinds him and shows how frustrated he is and how powerless he is to change the fact that his father is going to die. The speaker talks about the loss of love due to the death of a loved one which makes the meaning of the poem not that clear because of the use of metaphors. The speakers message about love remains so touching which should have made the dying of his father more important but he puts his own rage in first place. The speaker makes by making each line contain the same number of