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Introduction
Poem’s Name - Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Written By - Dylan Thomas
Form - Villanelle
Originally Published - 1951
Collected in - In Country Sleep, And Other Poems (1952 volume)
Refusing To Go Gently Into That Good Night
The poem begins with a sort of a command- “Do not go gentle into that good night”- and the tone of the poem is set. In the poem, the speaker is imploring, not just his readers but also his own father, as revealed in the last stanza, not to give in to their approaching death, to not go peacefully and silently into the eternal sleep but fight bravely as much as they can until the inevitable comes.
Wise men resist because they are yet to say or do something revolutionary to shock the world like a lightning bolt. Good men resist because they think they could do more good than they’ve done and make a difference in the world. Wild and daring men resist because they’ve seen life’s beauty and joy and regret that their time has run out.
Grave or the serious men resist because they realize that even those without sight can be full of light just like the meteors and it inspires them to resist against the darkness of their approaching death. In the end, the speaker mentions his father whose death is near, and is almost begging him to not go away.
About The Poem
“Do not go gentle into that good night” was written by Dylan Thomas in 1947 when he visited Florence with his family. This poem is one of his most famous works. This masterpiece of Thomas was first published in 1951 in the Italian literary journal Botteghe Oscure and was then included in his poetry collection In Country Sleep, And Other Poems, 1952.
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It is also a paradigmatic example of a poetic form called villanelle. A villanelle has 19 lines divided into 5 stanzas of 3 lines (tercets) and a concluding quatrain. It must have two refrains and two repeating rhymes.
Dylan Thomas wrote this poem during a pivotal point in his life. He was introduced to the beauty of words by his father, David John Thomas, who used to read the works of Shakespeare to him every night. He was a grammar school teacher who couldn’t realize his dream of becoming a poet.
Though it's not explicit that the speaker is Thomas himself, literary scholars and experts believe that Dylan Thomas wrote this poem inspired by his dying father (who passed away on the Christmas of 1952) since the speaker in the poem and the poet, both have an ailing father in common with each other.
About Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
To be able to better comprehend any literary work, it is important to know about the author and their mindset. So here’s a bit about Dylan Thomas, the self-proclaimed “roisterous, drunken, doomed poet”.
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Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales in 1914 and started writing poetry at an early age. Many of his most well-known poems, such as “And death shall have no dominion” and “Before I knocked”, were penned while he was still a teenager. His poetry was so brilliant that it drew the notice of T.S. Eliot, Geoffrey Grigson, and Stephen Spender, who helped him publish his first book of poetry, 18 Poems when he was just 20 years old.
Dylan Thomas was a reclusive, passionate, and lyrical writer and although he was influenced by surrealist poetry, his lyricism and passionate emotion have more in common with the romantics than his contemporaries. Furthermore, unlike other contemporary modern poets, Thomas’ poems are not concerned with societal themes but physical processes of life and death.
Thomas’ heavy drinking and several affairs strained his marriage. It put a strain on his physique as well. Thomas became ill while on tour in the United States in 1953, drifted into a coma on the night of his 39th birthday and a few days later, he passed away. Like many poets and literary geniuses, Dylan Thomas died before he could fully show off his literary potential.
Analysis of the Themes Involved
At its core, “Do not go gentle into that good night” is a poem not about death but about the psychological experience of dying, about how to face death as it approaches. The opening line, which is also one of the two refrains of the poem, emphasizes the paradoxical nature of this experience; death is “good” yet unacceptable.
It is depicted as a “good night”, suggesting that it is fundamental to the natural order of things, yet the speaker urges the ones near death to fight against it, to not silently accept it but defy it. The second refrain broadens the central metaphor’s range and evokes feelings of anger towards the imminent death that the dying people often feel.
The speaker considers death in a broader sense after seeing his dying father. He talks about various types of men and contemplates how they, too, will have to face death one day. The sense of all-encompassing futility that arises from this sequence of images is that there is no modus operandi to life that eliminates or mitigates the inevitability of death.
The contradictory aspect of death is made apparent once more: one cannot avoid or delay death, but one nevertheless rages against it. It's the psychological state that might not be rational but is the most realistic.
Retrospection, the process by which the elderly look back and reflect on their life, is another one of the key themes of “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”. The second through fifth stanzas of the poem are divided into four vignettes or parables, each illustrating a different type of person approaching death and gaining insight into their life's path, and even having regrets about things they could’ve done.
To Conclude
Even though the poem is dedicated to Thomas' father, it has a universal message. The poem encourages those who are dying, such as the sick and aged, to fight death bravely and not just death but uncertainty in general too. Even though life is frail and brief, the poem honors the vigor and enthusiasm of human life.
Written By - Sanjana Chaudhary
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