Comparing Do not go gentle and Ferne Hill by Dylan Thomas

Comparing Do not go gentle and Ferne Hill by Dylan Thomas

When reviewing the work of Dylan Thomas, one can see that he changes his style of language, such as using metaphors and imagery, to fit each poem accordingly. In the poems, "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night," and "Fern Hill," which are the poems I will be looking at in this presentation, he uses different techniques and language to make each poem more effective to the reader. I have chosen these works because they are his most well known, I shall start off by reading the poem “Do Not Go Gentle…” even if it was written after Fern Hill, as it is the most famous of all his works. "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" is addressed to Thomas' father, giving him advice on how he should die. The poem is a villanelle, which is a type of French pastoral lyric. It was not found in English literature until the late nineteenth century. It derives from peasant life, originally being a type of round sung. It progressed throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to its present form. For Dylan Thomas, its strictly disciplined rhyme scheme and verse format provided the framework through which he expresses "both a brilliant character analysis of his father and an ambivalent expression of his love towards him"(Magill 569 ).

In its standardized format, the poem consists of five tercets, having three lines, and a quatrain, having four lines, rhymed aba, aba, aba, aba, aba, abaa. In the first tercet, the first line "Do not go gentle into that good night" and the third line "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" alternate as a refrain to the following four verses. These two lines also become the last two lines of the concluding quatrain. This sets up a sui...

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... Thomas repeatedly blends his life into his work, however, his style, figurative language, and other techniques are altered for each poem. Thomas does this so that the poem's idea or message compliment the poem's language. He used vivid and energetic imagery to bring his poems alive. He uses words not only for their literal meaning, but also for the sound the word and the meaning that sound creates. It is said that the key to Thomas' poetry is reading it aloud, slowly, and hitting every vowel and consonant, then go back to try to understand it. Thomas continually writes about very particular points in his life. However, he writes in a different way each time. He chooses a style for each poem so it has the most effect on the reader. Thomas stresses on sounds and double meanings with words and was greatly influenced the American society where he died in New York 1953.