PR 8

Katie Bomar
3.19.11
English IV AP
Jernigan

Poetry Response: “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas

Thomas’s primary focus in this poem is how to confront death. He opens each tercet by introducing a new type of man and revealing the way he approaches dying. “Wise men” know dark is right, but Thomas suggests that perhaps because these men lacked influential abilities, they do not go quietly to their grave. “Good men” go crying and humbled while “wild men” don’t acknowledge death until it’s too late. Finally, “grave men” have eyes that “could blaze like meteors and be gay.”

Repetition is utilized with the phrase “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” This phrase had a strong impact on the passion and purpose of the poem. Thomas is daring men to meet their death fighting courageously, to not spare a single breath even as they stand at death’s door. Thomas calls a fighting spirit, a “raging” spirit to action- especially when meeting death. Thomas also repeats a prominent idea that also happens to be the title of the poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” This carries some of the same threads of theme that the first repeated phrase did about warring for life in the moments when death is near.

I enjoyed the solemn, yet brave tone of this poem. It almost seems as if Thomas is championing “carpe diem” even when one goes to face their death. I loved the idea of a “raging” spirit- one that writhed and wrestled and kicked away from death’s grasp in order to take back another moment of life. This poem had similar undertones that were reminiscent of James Joyce in The Dead when he wrote, “Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.” I agreed with the overall theme of the passage and I felt that the villanelle was an engaging medium to use in presenting Thomas’s perception of death.