Dylan Thomas Poem, Essay Example

Introduction

The reader of this villanelle, or French inspired poetic frame, knows intuitively, at once, that it bears an urgent spirit. By line 16, the reader knows for sure who the poet is and whom the poet is addressing. Words like burn, rave, blaze, curse, fierce, and the all-important and recurring rage stand out, even upon initial exposure, to signify that death is imminent.

Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), the poet, uses the subject of death to instruct the living. There is unity in the poem that pulls together the human experience as it tries to help us make sense out of the life we observe in others and as we make our own approach to the end of life as we know it. This poem is among Thomas’ most beloved, for it resonates with the experiences that each of us have with personal loss of life and love.

The poem has five, clear elements that are easily summarized. First, its meaning is most concerned with how we face the end of life. Second, its tone represents a perfect balance between the polar opposite emotions of empathy and anger, joy and sorrow. Third, its figures of speech are pointed references to one who may not even be able to hear them, making them even more important. Fourth, its sound effects are classic throwbacks to an earlier day from the time in which Thomas lived. Last, its symbols represent a familial bond between a child and a parent.

Meaning and Message

“Do Not Go Gentle…,” on the surface, is saying that a person should not give up in the face of illness and suffering. It is saying that a person should stare death right in its poetic eye and dare it to win. It urges the dying person to fight to the end. It is quite easy to get this message as the stanzas unfold.

As is the case in most good poetry, there is a deeper meaning as well. It is not poetic that some people who have lived strong, durable lives have to die a death that weakens them into being different people than they have ever been before. We want them to die as they lived, and sometimes it does not work out that way. This appears to be the case for Thomas and the subject of his poem.

There may be great variation in the ways in which wise men, good men, wild men, and grave men live their lives, but, at the cusp of death, we are reminded of how narrow and how similar the experience of leaving life comes from the wider days of healthy youth and the myriad of options that were ours. This is the lesson of life that Thomas gives to us in these 19 lines. This is what he wants us to know, to be, and to do: live in life and live in death.

Tone

The speaker of the poem is the child. The person to whom the poem is intended is the father. The subject is death. Thomas wrote this as a way to deal with his grief in watching his father lose his bout with illness and approaching death. The speaker wants the father to fight. The assumption is that there is no way for the father to get well or to delay his death. Thomas makes death the tone of the poem. How the father faces death is the only issue. The fact that he is dying appears to be a foregone conclusion.

Four times Thomas gives the admonition, “Do not go gentle into that good night…,” the title of the poem.” This supports the assertion that he wants his father be in death what he apparently did in life –strong and brave. How interesting it is to find the poetic significance when the word gentle is removed. Then, the reproach takes on the sorrow that comes with losing a parent. The adult child becomes the little boy again, pleading with the parent to stay with him. “Do not go.”

Figures of Speech

Line 14 contains the simile “blaze like meteors.” Lines 3, 9, and 15 use “light” as a metaphor for life. “Day” is used metaphorically for life in Line 2. “Old age should burn and rave,” also from Line 2, provides poetic personification. Line 10 uses “caught and sang the sun” to great effect as poetic license. In Line 13, there is a marvelous dissimilar pairing of the words “blinding sight,” that gives clarity to the poet’s meaning. This is followed in Line 15 with the emphatic exhortation, “blind eyes could blaze.” The use of opposites occur again in Line 17 with “curse, bless.”                  

Sound Effects

Thomas’ rhyme scheme is simple. The first and third lines of each group of three lines contains rhyming sounds, and each of these uses one of these words: light, night, right, bright, flight, sight, and height. Lines 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, and 17 also rhyme, using these words: day, they, bay, way, gay, and pray.

Only a few, fleeting sounds of alliteration, “rage, rage” is heard in the poem.  As for assonance, a slight case is made with the refrain, “Do not go….good” throughout.

Onomatopoeia is not present.  The poetic devices used in the poem bring rhythmic pulse to its reading. Anyone who has ever heard a recording of Dylan Thomas reading this knows how he loved to linger on the “r” of rage to make it more dramatic.

Symbolism

Although the word “candle” is not used, the reader imagines a burning candle when there is talk about life “burning,” or, in this case, “burning out.” “Wise men,” at death may realize that they were not so wise, because they “forked no lightning.” This is symbolic of their incompleteness. Those who lament over what “their frail deeds might have been,” know that at death, they have run out of time. Those “deeds” are symbolic of their being unfulfilled. Men who do not grasp the possibilities of life “and learn, too late,” are symbolized by things that might have been. Some serious minded men come to death without memories of happiness. It is too late for them to be “gay.”

Conclusion

The summary of the elements of the poem bring us an understanding about life when it faces death. The poet wants us to cheer those we love to be brave and strong at those moments when age and infirmity call us to be timid and weak. The poetic terms described herein were not used indiscriminately by Thomas. They were chosen to convey a depth of feeling for those who no longer can speak for themselves. This is not Thomas being one of his contemporaries. This is not Auden. This is not Elliot. This is a modern man speaking is if from another era. The bond of father and son is touching. Even though the father does not speak, he is involved in the conversation.

Most all of us will stand beside the bed of a loved one who is dying. When we do, we would do well to recall these words from the pen of Dylan Thomas. The poem would not fit the lives of many, good, great people, but for some, it would be a perfect thing to read aloud as they slip into that far away place from which they seldom return.