Assignment 12

Dylan Thomas: “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” (p. 1083)

This poem was occasioned by the fatal illness of the poet’s father in 1945. His father had been a strong and authoritarian teacher; in his eighties, however, he became blind and ill. The speaker is dismayed at his father’s physical decay and tells his father to maintain his courage in the face of blindness and death. With remarkable skill Thomas employs the *villanelle for an impassioned plea for life right to the moment of extinction.

The poem is rich in figurative language. The overall effect is to describe death metaphorically as the end of a day and thus, in some sense, to familiarize death and lessen its threat. Thomas introduces several examples of people who might be expected to acquiesce to death gently but who, nevertheless, resist it. "Wise men" (philosophers?) want more time because so far their wisdom has not created any radical change ("forked no lightening"). Men who do good works (theologians? clergymen?) look back and realize that the sum total of their efforts was "frail" and if they had devoted more time to a fertile field ("green bay"), their deeds might have been more effective. "Wild men" (inspired artists, writers) know their words have caught and held time, but they know too how in various ways--with their relations with others or perhaps with alcohol and drugs--they have "grieved" the sun. Grave men at the end of their lives realize too late that joy is one means of transcending time. All these groups experience some form of knowledge that makes them wish they could prolong life and live it according to their new insights.