An Explication of Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night :: Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

Introductory Paragraph Dylan Thomass villanelle Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night is addressed to his immemorial father. The poem is remarkable in a number of ways, most notably in that contrary to most common poetic treat manpowerts of the inevitability of death, which conclude for serenity or celebrate the peace that death provides, this poem urges ohmic resistance and love in the face of death. It justifies that unusual attitude by describing the rage and resistance to death of four kinds of men, all of whom can summon up the image of a complete and satisfying life that is denied to them by death. starting body carve up The first tercet of the intricately rhymed villanelle opens with an sensational line. The adjective gentle appears whither we would expect the adverb gently. The strange diction evokes that gentle may describe both the going (i.e., gently dying) and the person (i.e., gentleman) who confronts death. Further, the verbaliser characterizes night, here cl early a figure for death, as good. Yet in the beside line, the speaker urge that the aged should violently resist death, characterized as the conclusion of day and the dying of the light. In effect, the first three lines argue that notwithstanding good death may be, the aged should refuse to die gently, should passionately rave and rage against death. The second body paragraph describes the second tercet. The one-third body paragraph the good men The fourth body paragraph the wild men The fifth body paragraph the grave men Concluding paragraph The speaker then calls upon his aged father to nitty-gritty these men raging against death. Only in this final stanza do we draw that the entire poem is addressed to the speakers father and that, notwithstanding the generalized statements about old age and the focus upon types of men, the poem is a personal lyric. The edge of death becomes a sad height, the summit of wisdom and experience old age attains includes the sad knowledge of lifes failure to satisfy the vision we all pursue. The depth and complexity of the speakers sadness is startlingly given the second line when he calls upon his father to both curse nd bless him. These opposites richly suggest several related possibilities.