Scribd
Upload
6 views4 pages

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Notes

The poem 'Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night' by Dylan Thomas explores themes of defiance against death and the emotional turmoil surrounding the impending loss of a father. Through powerful imagery and repeated refrains, the speaker expresses a desperate plea for resistance against the finality of death, emphasizing the energy of life and the regret of unfulfilled potential. The poem's structure and use of sensory language highlight the tension between life and death, culminating in a poignant acceptance of mortality.

Uploaded by

cvzzwbzryk
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
6 views4 pages

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Notes

The poem 'Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night' by Dylan Thomas explores themes of defiance against death and the emotional turmoil surrounding the impending loss of a father. Through powerful imagery and repeated refrains, the speaker expresses a desperate plea for resistance against the finality of death, emphasizing the energy of life and the regret of unfulfilled potential. The poem's structure and use of sensory language highlight the tension between life and death, culminating in a poignant acceptance of mortality.

Uploaded by

cvzzwbzryk
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

Anthology Poetry 2P/2Q

‘Do not go gentle into that good night’


26/2/25

Do not go gentle into that good night, 1


Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,


Because their words had forked no lightning they 5
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright


Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, 10


And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight


Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 15

And you, my father, there on the sad height,


Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 19

Dylan Thomas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJxW3KgU_XE

iamb = unstressed then stressed eg. define

1
trochee = stressed then unstressed eg. season
Spondee = two stressed syllables eg. rage rage

Key words / ideas:

Defiance
Old age
Family relationships
Fathers
Light imagery

Focus: death
How does the poet present death in this poem?

The speaker uses a euphemism to refer to death: ‘that good night’. His emotional anguish means that he
is unable to confront the reality of his father’s death directly.

The speaker seems terrified of the silence of death and encourages his father to ‘rave’, ‘rage’ and
‘curse’. Although these verbs suggests a speech that is uncontrolled, angry or even violent they are at
least a sign of the energy of life. These verbs are aso monosyllables which give them a certain power

There is no hint of an afterlife in Thomas’s poem (Thomas was an atheist) and this increases the
speaker’s fear of the finality of his father’s death. The refrains (at the end of each tercet) serve to
‘return’ us to the opening stanza as if they are resisting the movement of the poem towards closure. The
repeated reference to the ‘dying of the light’ implies that the process is irreversible.

Both poems - ‘Remember’, which we have not done yet - involve a change in the speaker’s approach
to death. In the final stanza of Thomas’s poem the shift to a quatrain signals, perhaps, a ‘relaxation’ in
the poem’s cyclical structure and an acceptance of the inevitable. Now both refrains come together to
form a rhyming couplet that feels complete and which emphasises that this is very definitely the end.

In Thomas’s poem, the nearness of death is more poignant because of the contrasting images of energy
and of passionate commitment to life. In one example, ‘Blind eyes’ are given an almost cosmic power
when we are told that they could ‘blaze like meteors’. Another image captures the joy, the immersion in
life and the expressiveness of ‘Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight’. The villanelle uses
many examples of sensory language, especially the sense of sight

The speaker gives examples of the sense of regret that is often felt as death approaches. This regret is

2
the feeling that more could have been achieved in life. We are presented with an image of ‘wise men’
who are frustrated by their belief that their words have ‘forked no lightning’. Thomas here seems to
imply that wisdom, whilst highly prized, is not enough; what seems to matter most is the impact that we
have had on the world. This impact is visualised in the dramatic celestial metaphor of something having
the ability to cause something as powerful as lightning to fork.

The pattern of the refrains in Thomas’s villanelle (the name for the particular poetic form that he is
using) creates a sense of an almost flickering movement between night and day as the words ‘light’ and
‘night’ interchange, like the way that someone who is dying exists on a threshold between life and
death.

What poems are similar to this poem?


Do not go gentle +
Poem 2 Quotations Theme

Remember Death
Grief
Longing

Powerful images Many of the poems!

Feelings about fathers If-


Poem at 39

Passion / emotions

death

Giving advice

Love for another person

3
4

You might also like