Preparation for Midterm
“When I Have Fears” by John Keats
“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good
Night” by Dylan Thomas
Expectations:
• Thesis should ANSWER THE QUESTION asked
and make a strong claim about both poems.
• Body paragraphs should have strong support
and analysis (should quote each poem at least
1 time per body paragraph).
• Quotes should be relevant, correctly cited,
and well explained.
Why is Keats so obsessed with
mortality?
• This poem is informed by anxiety about death and lost
potential.
• Keats had trained to be a doctor, but decided to make his
way writing poetry instead, so he was intimately familiar
with the frailty of the human body.
• Keats wrote “When I Have Fears,” (p. 707) in a letter to a
friend in January of 1818.
• His mother had died of TB (which in his time was called
“consumption”) in 1810, and it would eventually kill John
Keats as well (he was only 25 when he died in 1821).
• His brother Tom also died of the TB in December of 1818,
and Keats nursed him through much of his illness (possibly
contracting TB himself at this time, though no one is sure).
Two Portraits of John Keats
By William Hilton, c. 1822
By Charles Armitage Brown,
1819
Both images © National Portrait Gallery, London
“When I Have Fears” and Sonnet Form
• “When I Have Fears” is a sonnet. Remember,
sonnets have a problem, a turn and a
resolution.
• Keats problem… he fears he’s going to die
young, and he’s not going to get all of his
ideas written down. Also, he worries that he’s
never going to fall in love, and any love that he
experiences will be fleeting.
• Lines 1-12 discuss this problem in detail.
Some important images/metaphors in
the “problem” section:
• In the first four lines of the poem, Keats
compares the process of writing to an
agricultural harvest.
• Glean (line 2): to make a second pass over a
field that has been harvested to get all the
crops that the first harvesters left behind.
• Notice that the farming metaphor continues
on lines 3-4, where the books are like barns
for the “crop” – his writing.
Some important images/metaphors in
the “problem” section:
• “Romance” in line 6 isn’t romantic love in the 21st century
sense, but rather a grand story of adventure. (Keats either
means that he desires to WRITE this story, or that he
desires to EXPERIENCE it. Either interpretation makes
sense.)
• Notice nature as a source of inspiration here. It’s “the
night’s starred face” (line 5) that inspires Keats’ vision of
“high romance.”
• In line 9, though, Keats is definitely talking about romantic
love.
• “Faery” in line 11 doesn’t mean cute little Disney pixies. It’s
something much more powerful, a bit overwhelming in
their terrible beauty. (The Victorians made fairies cute.
Before that, they were beautiful, yes, but also terrifying.)
The Turn
• The TURN comes in the middle of line 12.
Notice that he goes out “to the shore of the
wide world” in order to get some perspective.
• Notice the change in tone after the turn. The
love and fame that were so important to him
before have become nothing.
“Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good
Night” p. 651-652
• Thomas writes this poem about the
impending death of his father. (I know that
Thomas died soon after the publication of this
poem, but unlike Keats, it was a much more
sudden illness. Dylan Thomas doesn’t know
he’s sick when he writes this.)
Two photographs of Dylan Thomas
Form of “Do Not Go Gentle”
• This poem is follows a form called a villanelle, which
has very specific requirements about length, rhyme
scheme, etc.
• Villanelles have five stanzas of three lines each that ALL
have the same rhyme scheme of ABA (notice that there
are only two end rhymes in the whole poem… the
rhymes for “night” or “day”).
• The last stanza of a villanelle, bringing it up to 19 lines,
has 4 lines, and has the rhyme scheme AABB.
• Villanelles also call for the repetition of the 1st and 3rd
line of the first stanza at specific places in the poem.
Examples of “Good Deaths”
• Thomas offers as examples several different kinds of
men who were unwilling, for various reasons, to “go
gentle into that good night.”
• Wise men – second stanza
• Good men – third stanza
• Wild men – fourth stanza (for some reason our book
leaves out the space between lines 9 and 10)
• Grave men – fifth stanza
• Each of these types of men has a reason to “Rage, rage
against the dying of the light.”
The Final Stanza
• In the final stanza, Thomas addresses his father
directly.
• Notice how he brings two opposites, curses and
blessings, into the same line, and doesn’t seem to
make much distinction between them.
• The last two lines (as required by the villanelle
form) are a final repetition of the two lines that
have been repeated throughout the poem. (They
are called the “refrain.”)