Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Analysis

What if someone told you that your father was dead, but on Sundays you can visit him at Walmarts? Would you go? Though the majority of the people would think this is a crazy question, others would go in hopes of seeing their loved ones again. Most people would consider a father's life to be of a significant value, being that a father strengthens the household with discipline and leadership, one that can never be matched. So, when the death of a parent occurs, it can be devastating, especially when that parent is a father. The literary works of both A.S. Byatt's “The Thing in the Forest” and Dylan Thomas's “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” gives us a glimpse of what it feels like to lose a father. In Byatt's story, the thing in the forest

Byatt's story tells how Penny and Primrose had grown up into adults and how they both went back to the forest in a separate direction to where they first saw the “thing”. The one thing that Thomas saw when he grew up was a strong man (his father) who was taken down early in his life to nearly nothing, as life took its toll on him. However, what Penny and Primrose thought they saw as little girls, (the thing) was merely a figment of their imagination and no longer was present in their lives. For instance, since the “thing” represented death, and their fathers had died when they were little girls, that moment in time had been long passed. Still, it left them in a dark place, reflecting on their fathers (Byatt 312-316). Thomas was left in a dark place as well but chose to pull on his heartstrings, as he wrote a touching poem about his father. As Penny sat alone in the forest, she had a vivid memory of her father and how he talked about the war. He had died in a fire at the East India Docks. Then, Penny recalled how there was nothing of him left in the coffin at the funeral and how deeply it affected her mother (Byatt 315). Thomas's father was a vibrant, ex-military man who was once bold and courageous until his illness made him a casualty in his own cancerous war (Holbrook). A war with a poisonous disease that crept into his soul and tugged on his tumorous organs. The health issues of heart disease and blindness struck Thomas's father as well, making it hard for Thomas to watch without being emotionally attached (Ferris 26-33). Primrose, on the other hand, could not remember the face of her father, but could remember the “thing”. She sat on the moss waiting for its return. Primrose recalled the moment when her mother entered the house crying over her father's death (Byatt 313). Although the writer might not have illustrated Primrose's love for her