Introduction

Rage, Rage against the dying of the light” (3).When faced with losing a family member or a close friend, I think that most people would agree that they would want them to pass peacefully, calmly, and not have to struggle or experience any prolonged pain. However, in Dylan Thomas’s poem, “Do not go Gentle into that Good Night” he would rather his father put up a struggle to live and not succumb to death. With such a gripping take on how a love one should come to terms with death we, as the readers, are left to interpret why Thomas feels that life is so worth fighting for.
One way to figure out why Thomas feels this way is to look at what kind of poem he uses to send his message. Every poet has to consider what style of poem he or she is going to use. The style tells a lot about the poems meaning. Thomas uses a villanelle which is commonly used for comical works and is very structured. This is very interesting because the poem is very serious and emotional. It may mean that Thomas feels that his father’s death may have been unexpected. The poem being so structure suggest that life it self follows a strict structure that is inevitable. Another way we can try to discover Thomas’s intension is to try and interpret the four different men that he describes. Wise, good, wild, and grave are all different types of men that Thomas uses. I think that these men describe his father at different stages of his life.
The suggestion that fighting your death is better than passing easily is hard for some of us to understand, but if we analyze Thomas’s poems we may be able to understand his perspective. Looking at different aspects of Thomas’s poems shows that though different stages of life presents us with challenging things life is worth living.