Dylan Thomas 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night'

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Every human on earth is born with one thing they have no control over, their death. As a human we can do can try as hard as we want to live a healthy, cautious life, but ultimately none of us can escape death. The thought of mortality is viewed differently by many. Some people embrace it with the mindset that a great after life is coming, while others spend their entire life trying to fight it in hope they can achieve a way to escape it. Authors Dylan Thomas and Nathaniel Hawthorne each write about it in their some of their works. In “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas we have an author whose father has just passed and he writes a poem in protest against the idea of accepting death quietly. It discusses the many ways of…show more content…
As the story begins, Aylmer, a fixated scientist, has recently married Georgiana, an attractive woman with one superficial physical flaw: a hand-shaped red birthmark upon her left cheek. Soon after their marriage, Aylmer becomes obsessed with his wife's birthmark and one day brings up the subject of removing it. The topic is dismissed momentarily, but then one night, Aylmer dreams of surgically removing the birthmark and screams in his sleep that it is inside Georgiana's heart. After this episode, Georgiana, becoming increasingly upset by her husband's birthmark-obsession, finally agrees to have him perform a treatment to remove it. Thus, Georgiana is isolated in a luxurious boudoir while Aylmer works night and day in the adjoining lab to discover a treatment. He finally creates a potion which his wife willingly drinks. The birthmark fades slowly into non-existence, but at the cost of Georgiana's life, who dies immediately after the success of her treatment. The story ends on a somewhat preachy note with Hawthorne's musings on Aylmer's lack of profound knowledge and the finding of happiness in the midst of imperfection and mortality. The theme of mortality is made frequently in the statements made by Aylmer. He talks about having the power to "prolong life" and concocting an "elixir of immortality" (Hawthorne 296). He is strangely captivated by alchemy, wishing to discover "the universal solvent by which the golden principle might be elicited from all things vile and base" (Hawthorne 296). Undeniably, every word that comes out of this man's mouth is almost somehow connected to perfecting everything and rendering people immortal. The birthmark symbolizes human mortality. For Aylmer, Georgiana came "nearly perfect from the hand of Nature" (Hawthorne 291). The existence of the birthmark deeply bothers him because it reminds him
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