Poetry Explication: To Live as if You're Dying

        As my introduction says, "What better way is there to die than falling into a gentle slumber and your soul knowing that you have lived radically for and true to your purpose and beliefs?" My poetry explication of "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas will tell you just that. I loved  being able to dig into the significance of this poem, the life event that inspired this poem, and the way Thomas's diction, and style of writing contributed to the overall meaning.

To Live as if You're Dying

 What better way is there to die than falling into a gentle slumber and your soul knowing that you have lived radically for and true to your purpose and beliefs? There is none. Dylan Thomas lived an untamed life of dancing on the line of alcoholism, rebelling against traditional poetry, and ignoring his wedding vows every now and then ("Dylan (Marlais) Thomas" 3). In “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”, Thomas used the art of words to process the unforgiving nature of time by writing in villanelle form, using intense, image-bearing language, and by repeating what he so desperately wanted to get across to whomever was reading his poem. 

 A poem in villanelle form is nineteen lines, emotional and repetitive. The rules of villanelle are for the first and third line to be repeated in every other stanza and then both lines are repeated in the last two lines of the final stanza  (McLaughlin). In Thomas’s poem, the two repeating lines are, ”Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (1, 3). The rhyme scheme is a simple rhyme scheme of ABA ABA ABA ABA ABA ABAA. For example, in the poem being explained the end of each line in stanza one end with the words, “night”, “day” and, “light (1-3). That is the ABA rhyme scheme. Thomas demonstrates the last stanza’s rhyme scheme of ABAA by using the words “height”, “pray”, “night” and “light” (16-19). When Thomas wrote the poem, he based it upon his father’s death and the realization of just how fast man can neutrally stroll through life but as their life comes to an end, they regret not living boldly and driven ("Dylan (Marlais) Thomas" 6). A traditional villanelle focuses on “pastoral or rustic themes” (Poets.org). Although Thomas does focus on death, which fits into the pastoral theme, he doesn’t focus on the heavenly side of death but rather the hellish side of death. He twists the form to pour his grief and frustration out to his readers.

 Thomas’s diction plays a huge role in communicating his electrifying, chilling emotions. He begins his poem off with, “Do not go gentle into that good night” and then goes on to say how we should rather “rage” against death and fight with a passion (1-3). His next four stanzas address the four types of men (and women) who do not go so gentle into the night due to regret. The first man, the “wise man”, understood the logic of death but “their words had forked no lightning” (4-6). Thomas’s use of the word “forked'' and “lightning” both illustrate through imagery that if a man’s words do not create a “fork in the road” of tradition or shock our original thought, that man will be in the grave regretting not doing so. “Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay” (7-9). When this is read with accountancy of the imagery, “the last wave”, to me, is how much of an impact they have made and if their impact reached “a green bay”, land. To use the word “wave” is to paint out the endless opportunities that each man has to make an impact on the world before he leaves, but there comes a time when the last wave arrives and nothing has been impacted. Then there is the “wild” man “who caught and sang the sun in flight / and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way” (10-12). This wild man, much like Thomas himself, got every last drop of fun but found that he didn’t make much of an impact by partying and doing other nefarious deeds. The last type of man “near death” is a “grave man” literally and figuratively (13-15). Thomas uses this pun to state that every dying man is a dead man without living life to its’ fullest. Throughout this poem his diction creates a pathway back to his pressing point: Death is inevitable, ruthless and to rage against it your whole life by living passionately with purpose rather than trying to do that on your deathbed. 

 The obsessiveness of this poem’s message and phrases stem from Thomas’s anguish. He repeats the phrases ”Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” four times each. He wanted to communicate that the pain and regret that comes along with death can be lessened by raging against it before it happens. He wants his readers to understand that the raging doesn’t have to be done on that “sad height” of a death bed (16). “Wise men”, “good men”, “wild men”, “grave men”, all are infuriated, saddened, and heart broken with the fact that their impressions on this earth would soon fade away with their bodies six feet below. Repeating these phrases communicates the seriousness of how living with death in mind and your passions unconfined is how one will “go gentle into that good night”. But living void of purpose and influence forces man to rage against the regret and “dying of the light”. The roaring echo of these two phrases communicate to the reader the “grave” importance of the message that Thomas is so badly wanting to communicate before they too “do not go gentle into that good night” (13).

 “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” is a poem flooded with emotions exemplified by the passionate free form of villanelle, the jolting, distinct use of words, and by the restless repetition of the phrase inspired by his heart-breaking agony of his father’s death. To go gently into the night without any regrets is to live as if you are dying every day, to live for creating “wave(s)” that reach that “green bay”, to live for forking other’s and your own beliefs, to “curse” or to “bless” others with “your fierce tears” before death (7-8, 5, 17). 

Works Cited

  "Dylan (Marlais) Thomas." Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors, Gale, 2003. Gale Literature Resource Center, https://link-gale-com.uaptc.idm.oclc.org/apps/doc/H1000098295/LitRC?u=lftla_pultch&sid=LitRC&xid=a2780723. Accessed 11 Apr. 2020. 

McLaughlin , Damon. “Villanelle.” Villanelle, 1999, uni.edu/~gotera/CraftOfPoetry/villanelle.html.

Thomas, Dylan. "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."  “Poetry Choices,” edited by Jennifer Atkins-Gordeeva, UA – Pulaski Technical College, 31 Mar. 2019. Originally published in The Norton Introduction to Literature, 12th ed., 2017, pp. 541-659. Course Handout

“Villanelle.” Poets.org, Academy of American Poets, poets.org/glossary/villanelle.