Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas [1914-1953]
Relevant Background
Dylan Thomas was born at home in Swansea, Wales in 1914.
His parents were middle class. His father was a schoolmaster in English at the local grammar school.
Dylan Thomas was anxious in himself as a child and sometimes unwell.
He was often absent from school and dropped out at sixteen. He preferred to read on his own.
He did very well in English and reading, but neglected other subjects.
As a poet it is clear that Dylan Thomas enjoyed playing with language.
‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ is an emotional and touching appeal to his dying father not to die.
Though Dylan’s father was an English teacher, he didn’t like his job.
However, Dylan was always grateful to his father for giving him a love of literature.
Thomas feared, respected, and deeply loved his father.
His father had been ill a long time without realising that he was dying.
Thus he couldn’t show his father this emotional poem.
Dylan Thomas spoke this poem to his father in his mind, but not in real life.
The poem is a villanelle. A villanelle is made up of five stanzas of three lines followed by a final stanza of four lines. See the note on ‘Form’ below.
It is normal for two of the lines to be repeated in a pattern throughout the poem.
So even though it is a nineteen-line poem, there are only thirteen individual lines of poetry to understand.
Dylan Thomas’ poetry is known for its vivid and often fantastic imagery.
He drank himself to death in a drinking session in New York City in 1953.
Summary
In the first stanza or tercet the poet urges his very ill father to fight his illness.
It is expressing a hope rather than an actual command because his father never heard the poem.
Dylan Thomas declares that even in old age the old should violently resist their death.
The poet urges his father to angrily hold on to his life.
In the second stanza, Thomas states that wise men may know that death is natural but they too resist death violently.
They hold on because they realise they have not made a sufficient impact on society with their wisdom.
In the third stanza, Thomas states that honest men don’t accept their death because they want to live on to give more good example to others.
In the fourth stanza, Thomas states that men who lived mad and wild lives don’t give in at the end. Thomas d...
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... sounds to emphasise anger and fighting in ‘Rage, Rage, against’. Notice the use of long ‘i’ sounds in the remainder of the line to express sadness ‘dying of the light’.
Sibilance [repetition of ‘s’ sound] The four ‘s’ sounds in ‘Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears’ create music and a mixture of tender and angry feelings.
Form It is an elaborately structured villanelle. A villanelle is made up of five stanzas of three lines [tercets] followed by a quatrain, a unit of four lines of poetry. The opening line of the poem, the first line in the first stanza, also ends the second and fourth tercets. The third and final line of the first tercet ends the third and fifth tercet as well as the quatrain at the end of the poem.
Rhyme There are just two end sounds shared by all the lines in the poem: ‘ight’ and ‘ay’. The poem follows the strict rhyme scheme of the villanelle. The first and third lines of each of the three-line stanzas rhyme with the same end sound for all those stanzas. The second line of all the stanzas rhyme. In the four-line stanza the first line rhymes with the third and the fourth line. ‘Go’ and ‘good’ as well as ‘rage, rage’ create music through internal rhyme.
First of alll, the poem is divided into nine stanzas, where each one has four lines. In addition to that, one can spot a few enjambements for instance (l.9-10). This stylistic device has the function to support the flow of the poem. Furthermore, it is crucial to take a look at the choice of words, when analysing the language.
The verse form in "One Art" is villanelle. The poem has tercet stanzas until the
Rhyme-The last words of line one and line three of each stanza rhyme. The last words of line two and line four of each stanza also rhyme. The rhyming words contribute to the rhythm and flow of the poem.
In "Myth" Trethewey uses a variant form of the villanelle to create the emotions she felt during her grief. Traditionally, a villanelle has five tercets followed by a quatrain with two repeating refrains and two repeating rhymes throughout the poem. Trethewey, however, changes this slightly.
In addition, Thomas uses images of " wise men" and " grave men [who] have not used their blinding sight" to tell his dying father that all men smart or ignorant, need to resistance towards death.
We are all going to die. It is only a matter of how and when. Many people wish for a peaceful death in which it is as seamless as falling asleep. However, Dylan Thomas goes against this particular grain in “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”. With the use of a defiant tone, repetition of critical lines, and provocative metaphors, Thomas implores individuals that they should not at any point give up despite death being imminent.
Choosing the first person form in the first and fourth stanza, the poet reflects his personal experiences with the city of London. He adheres to a strict form of four stanzas with each four lines and an ABAB rhyme. The tone of the poem changes from a contemplative lyric quality in the first to a dramatic sharp finale in the last stanza. The tone in the first stanza is set by regular accents, iambic meter and long vowel sounds in the words "wander", "chartered", "flow" and "woe", producing a grave and somber mood.
In the next 3 lines we can see the poets admiration for his father by
Kidder, Rushworth M. Dylan Thomas: The Country of the Spirit. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1984. 94, 187-190, 197.
The poem has used various stylistic devices such as alliteration, assonance, consonance, and rhyme schemes that create rhythm and musicality that would make the poem easy to recite and memorable. Alliteration involves repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of two words nearby within a line; for example, “some say…” in line one and two and “…favor fire” in line four (Arooge and Amber 455). In contrast, assonance involves repetition of vowel sounds in two adjacent words within a line. For instance, the poet has repeated the “i” sound in the fifth line “But if it had to perish twice.” Consonants refer to half rhymes in which a poet repeats the final consonant but with various preceding vowels.
Thomas presents death to us using a metaphor, he describes death as being “that good night” and thus makes death seem as something unknown, unseen, and unfamiliar. The portrayal of death as “that good night” suggests that death is like night time, dark and with a sense of unfamiliarity. This causes us to begin seeing death as something that we should fear and avoid or be cautious of. The first of line of the poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night” is an ironic contradiction, as it seems strange that we should not go gentle into something that is good. However, the next line of the poem which says “Old age should burn and rave at close of day”, makes it apparent that the previous line should be taken connotatively and that phrases like “go gentle and “good night” are symbolic of the dying process. When old age is mentioned in the poem in that line it makes us aware that death is imminent. References about day and night are also symbolic of life and death. Dickinson makes strong contradictions between old age and raging against death, as it is typically accepted that after a long and fruitful life, old age would prefer a gentle slip into a peaceful welcomed death. However, Thomas says otherwise, he advocates that old age should not give into the ease and comfort of death, and should instead
It has five tercets and a concluding quatrain: ABA-ABA-ABA-ABA-ABA-ABAA. Two different lines are repeated. Lines one, six, twelve, and eighteen are all the same. Line three reappears in line nine, fifteen and nineteen. Each tercet will conclude with an exact or very close duplication of line one or three.
He puts together all men from the wise, the old and the wild by stating that they all will eventually face death, and when that time comes he urges them to fight “rage” for longer life, rather than just accepting death. His portrayal differs from Dickenson’s as he presents death by using metaphors and imagery. (Napierkowski p49-60) He describes death as being “that good night” and the use of that metaphor causes death to become something unknown. Thomas suggests that death is like night time, it’s dark and unfamiliar. Thomas is presenting death as something that should be feared and something that we should fight against. His message in the poem is about how precious the gift of life is and he uses imagery with the phrases “old age should burn and rave at close of day. “(752) and “wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight.” (752) Thomas uses those poetic devices to convey anger and how powerless someone feels when being confronted by death. When Thomas reveals his father’s curse at the end of the poem you get a sense of passion that he feels for life and how he desperately wanted to send this powerful emotion to his
It consists of four stanzas, each a bit longer than the preceding one. Each stanza has it's own
When discussing the different aspects of New Criticism in Dylan Thomas’s poem “Do Not Go Gentle into The Good Night”, the impression that comes to mind is death. The use of imagery was a necessity for Dylan Thomas to express the different techniques of writing which involved a mixture of surrealistic and metaphysical tones. His ability to change a words meaning to incorporate symbolism is noticeable in circle of unity from life to death and renewed life.