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Analysis Of Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night By Dylan Thomas

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Watching his father be slowly extinguished by cancer left Dylan Thomas, a Welsh author in the 1930s and 1940s, feeling impuissant. Thomas wrote poetry throughout this onerous period in his life, and the emotional difficulties that he endured infiltrated his writing. From this close proximity to death, Thomas seemed to have reevaluated his life and the lives of others, and he wrote a poem about what he had discovered. Dylan Thomas wrote “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” for his father; however, critics believe that certain aspects of the poem give more insight as to how Thomas truly felt about death and how he believed it should be approached. Thomas wrote this poem because his father was dying, and Thomas felt that one should fight …show more content…

Marie Rose Napierkowski and Mary K. Ruby, the authors of Poetry for Students claim that by examining the four categories of wise, good, wild, and grave, Thomas “is identifying the kind of man he would like his father to be and, by extension, the kind of man he would like to be himself” (Napierkowski and Ruby 54). Though to some it appears obvious that the poem was intended for his father, specific stanzas or phrases stand out that seem to be about Thomas himself. For example, in line 5, the reference to wise men becoming disappointed with their lives because “their words had forked no lightning” is perceived as being more relevant to a poet than the poet’s father (Napierkowski and Ruby 54). Each of the kinds of men described were crestfallen having not achieved anything in their lives of value, however this particular phrase strikes deeper with Thomas since he was a writer. In this point of view, his life would have been meaningless if his writings did not have any impact on the world. There is also a metaphor of sight and blindness in stanza 5, which “reflects Thomas’s understanding of poetic knowledge and its limitations” (Napierkowski and Ruby 54). According to Napierkowski and Ruby, this example shows that even though the poem was written for his father, Thomas addressed his own life goals and restrictions. Thomas also never delivered this poem to his father, which further supports how it could be perceived that the man might have written some parts of this poem for himself. According to Jahn Hochman, if it is considered that the poem is written “more for the benefit of Thomas himself than for his father… then “Do Not Go Gentle” becomes less of a poem of defiance than a poem of paralysis and pain” (Hochman 58). He is saying that if Thomas truly did add stanzas that relate to his own life, then not only is he urging his father to resist death,

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