Analysis Of Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

924 Words4 Pages
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas tells readers to fight against death and not just to calmly accept it. He writes this poem in the form of a villanelle, which allows him to repeat the metaphor for death over and over again, and emphasize how powerful this main point is. There are three main themes for this poem. The first one is mortality. This whole poem centers on the word death. For example, the line “Do not go gentle into that good night” means for you to rebel against fate. Don’t go gently into your death. It wants you to leave the world like the way you came in, kicking and screaming, holding on to your life for all you’re worth. The second theme is determination. Your determination to struggle. The line “Rage,…show more content…
Dylan Thomas uses these to emphasis the main point he wants to tell us. For example, “Good night”, “Close of day”, “Dying of the light” are all metaphors of death. The metaphor “Dark is right” means death is right because dark means death. “Forked no lightning” means held no power because a lightning strike symbolizes power. “Frail deeds” means weak actions because frail often means weak or fragile and deeds are your actions. “Caught and sang the sun in flight” means to celebrate the sunny days, because the sun rises from the east and sets on the west, it looks like it’s flying through the sky, so therefore when it says caught and sang, it means when you live your days in the sun because when night comes, it’s your death. “Blinding sight” means trying to see the light, because people near death try to see the blinding light. Lastly, “Sad height” means death bed because when you’re lying down on a bed, besides from sleeping, it’s usually because you’re sick or dying and when you’re sick or dying, it’s a sad thing, so therefore “sad height” means death…show more content…
This form of poem has 10 syllables in each line, five three line verses with a final quatrain, rhymes using the ABA pattern and the first and last line of the first verse repeats throughout the poem. Here, we focus on the ABA pattern and the repetition. Repeating over and over again emphasizes the two sentences : “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Dylan Thomas makes sure you understand and get the message. The first two lines of each stanza tells us by giving examples why we should struggle against death, and the last line concludes the stanza with either one of the two repeated
Open Document