C3C K. Brett Mulligan
Dr. Ross Gresham
English 211, T2
Explication
Do not go gentle into that good night
Dylan Thomas, in his famous work “Do not go gentle into that good night,” explores how
individuals react to the end of life and suggests how we should view it. Through the villanelle
form, poem’s meter, its rhyme scheme, and several symbolic dichotomies, the poet creates an
effect which causes his audience to see death in a different way than if they took his words at
face value. “Do not go gentle into that good night” shows just how much a poet can say with
words just by the way he uses them.
The structure of the villanelle reinforces the order of life and death. From the start, the
poem’s iambic pentameter highlights its high level of organization. “Rage, rage against the dying
of the light,” exhibits this classic iambic meter. Each line in the poem follows suit with five
iambs. The rhyme scheme of a villanelle, “aba, aba” adds still more order to the poem, but even
the poems stanzas, which are all three lines besides the quatrain at the end, develop the poem’s
sense of organization.
The villanelle also lends its repetition to the desperate voice with which Thomas is
appealing to his father. For eight of the passage’s nineteen lines, the poet either pleads, “Do not
go gentle into that good night,” or urges, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” He
continuously and fervently implores his audience to fight with all their strength against the forces
of darkness. Dylan repeats his urging and pleading as though he can think of nothing else to say,
yet easily transitions to the portion of the villanelle where he can develop his own interpretations
of common reactions to death.
At the beginning of stanzas two, three, four, and five Thomas identifies a different type of
man and describes how each one relates to death. The “wise men,” know that the end is coming
and that it is the proper pattern of life. Men live their lives and then they die. These men know
that and have come to grips with it. They still do not “go gentle” because their words “had forked
no lightning.” They feel as though they have had no impact on their world, so they are desperate
to live longer that they might have one more chance to make a lasting impression.
Thomas’s “good men” in the third stanza find that they cannot yet leave this life
peacefully either. Without having validated themselves through heroic deeds or any feats of
greatness in their lives, they long for one last chance to prove their worth. It is ironic that Dylan
calls their deeds here “frail,” since he is identifying them as capable and presumably heroic.
However, that good men with heroic ambitions should have their aspirations called “frail”
indicates an emphasis on the frailty of human life in general. Our time is finite, our deeds
limited, says Dylan through his verse. We do not always win.
The “wild men” who “caught the sun” lived joyful lives and “sang the sun in flight,”
through their merrymaking speeding it to a premature sunset. Here Thomas uses the metaphor of
catching the sun as a representation of living in the moment and making the most of life. The
“wild men,” though, realized too late that their lifetimes were limited and they squandered them
on merriment and their own pleasure.
Thomas, in a pun, calls the men in the fifth stanza “grave men.” In terms of “grave” as it
is usually used to describe men, they appear both serious and solemn in their acceptance of their
fate. In terms of the physical grave, they are “grave” in that they continue to step ever closer to
entering their final resting place. This play on words highlights the poem’s tendency to have
alternative meanings in every word. Similarly, juxtapositions and dichotomies have the same
effect.
In the couplet at the end, another result of the poem’s villanelle form, Dylan’s plea to
“not go gently” and urge to “rage against the dying of light” come together in a closing thought
that reiterates one last time his deep desire for his audience to continue the fight. However, the
couplet brings closure to the poem that easily translates to closure for Thomas and his audience.
As the final syllable at once completes the couplet, the villanelle form, and the poem itself, the
truth of how the “night” really is good and right and natural finally reveals itself.
Throughout the poem, Dylan represents life and death through the symbols of light and
dark respectively, a dichotomy echoed in the poem’s villanelle “aba, aba” rhyme scheme. When
he opens the poem with, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” he appeals to his subject to
resist death by not going “gently.” Thomas believes toward the end of life, or “the close of day”
as he puts it, a person, “should burn and rave” against the approach of death. Acknowledging
that death is unavoidable and even the proper and natural course of life, however, he concedes,
“Wise men at their end know dark is right.” Dichotomy is evident throughout the entire poem.
Life and death, light and dark, day and night all find prominent places in this verse. Even the
presence of only two rhyming sounds strengthens the pattern of duality. The two most oft quoted
lines in the poem, “Do not go gentle” and “Rage, rage,” are opposites in a way. “Do not go
gentle” is stated negatively, and “Rage, rage” is its counterpart, stated positively. Through each
of these complementary relationships, we begin to see how Thomas sees life and death as a right
and natural order of things.
In order to emphasize the dichotomy of life and death, Thomas places other dichotomies
within the poem. For instance, the juxtaposition and subsequent paradox Thomas creates by
placing “curse” and “bless” next to each other reveals his mood as he feels torn between his
desire for his father to die peacefully, yet wanting him to fight to stay alive. Similarly, he uses
the word “good” to describe “night,” his symbol for death. In making such a blatant
contradiction, the poet points us directly to his true feelings his subject.
The poetic effects of “Do not go gentle” stem from its villanelle form. The style
emphasizes the order of life and death, the dichotomy of the two, and even the way death
completes life. Through a highly structured, highly organized, pleasantly rhyming work of
poetry, Thomas describes something as dreadful as death in a different light. He speaks of death
as an enemy to be fought, yet not to be feared.