Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night By Dylan Thomas

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The End of a Chapter Dylan Thomas believes that life should be lived to its fullest extent right until ones very last breath, and you should not be given up gently. One should try to exit this world still strong and passionate. This poem is Dylan Thomas’s appeal to his father to fight death and hang on to life for as long as possible. In ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas the author beseeches his father to prolong his life and fight his death. He uses four scenarios in which to encourage his father to please attempt to not give in to death without a fight. Old men should still ‘rave’ and ‘burn’ at the end of their life (“Gentle” 2). By this Thomas means that even though you are old and frail you should still not give in to death easily. He realizes that wise men know that they are meant to die based on the line “Though wise men at their end know dark is right” (“Gentle” 4). They should not give up even though they also realize that their lives will become insignificant. “Because their words had forked no lightning” and they should fight the concept that they should have accomplished more (“Gentle” 5). At the end of a good man’s life he might feel that his ‘deeds’ could have been brighter and bigger and this realization could make one feel sad and hopeless because there is no time to redo ones actions. One should not view ones life as diminished simply because it is in its final chapter. One should fight against going out quietly and believing you could have done better. Men who live their life with passion and zeal also realize at the end that maybe they spent too much time grieving or worrying unnecessarily about things that they could not change and perhaps they should have tried to attain even more from... ... middle of paper ... ... ‘curses’ him or ‘blesses him’ as long as he can elicit a strong emotion from him (“Gentle” 17). In essence he is trying to put off his own pain at dealing with his fathers death and therefore wants his father to hang on as long as possible, by not giving up his life ‘gently’ without a fight. Dylan Thomas would experience reassurance of his father’s love and approval if his father fought against death valiantly in order to spend more time with him (“Gentle” 4). He would also admire his father’s courage and spirit if his father refused to give up his life easily. In the analysis of poetry one is always looking for the universal truth and how it relates to life. In the case of a child losing a parent, it strengthens the concept of the child’s own mortality. When your father’s generation gradually disappears it reminds you that your generation is the next in line.

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