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Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Essay

1400 Words6 Pages

I used to do martial arts when I was younger. I trained in learning all the techniques and forms and learned how to defend myself. When I was within the lower belt range I would spar with my instructors who were higher ranked than me. I wasn’t an experienced fighter and when I sparred with them, they would always manage to knock me off my feet. I would grow frustrated because of this but they always told me to get back up, to never accept defeat.In Dylan Thomas’s, “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”, Thomas uses a myriad of literary devices to convey meaning in his poem. He uses metaphors, meter/rhythm, and repetition to convey the meaning that you should keep fighting for your life, even if you are very close to death and not accept defeat. My instructors and Thomas both conveyed similar messages. Thomas uses metaphors as a method to convey meaning.Throughout the poem Thomas uses metaphors to bring out his message of fighting to survive. One of the many used words in the poem are night, rage, dying, and light. Night is a metaphor for death as it represents what it is like to be dead. It is dark, just like at night. Light on the other hand is a metaphor for life. Life and death are opposites of each other just like night and day. During the day there is light and it is the time where we mostly spend our lives. Rage is a metaphor for fighting or resisting. When people …show more content…

Each stanza begins with naming a type of man. He uses old, good, wild, and grave to describe men. Old is a metaphor for wise because with age, wisdom is gained. Good is a metaphor for moral, wild is for young, and grave is for very sick because each word is a description for these men at these ages. Young people are wild, able to do whatever they want. Thomas uses these metaphors to convey his meaning by telling us that no matter what age you are and whatever circumstance you are under, do not give up on your life, fight to stay

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This constant physical battle with death is also displayed in the poem when Thomas repeats phrases such as, “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “rage, rage against the dying of the light” (Thomas), alluding that the son is pleading for his father not to succumb to death and instead, fight for that last glimmer of hope. Both authors' linguistic choices display the prevailing theme that one must maintain faith, even in the harshest of times, and remind the reader of how precious life is. In Night, death feels inevitable. This constant feeling of death causes Elie’s father’s death to be understated, with Elie merely waking up to his father being gone. His father's death seems so insignificant because it simply ends a life that was already full of suffering

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However, at the very end of the piece the father of the author is revealed to be the intended audience of the poem. Only in the last stanza does the reader find out Thomas’s father is on his death bed, and the author, choked up with emotion, begs his father not to die. Only in the last stanza does the author compare his father to the four types of men by implying his current frail condition is similar to the wise, good, wild, and grave men. By using the word “fierce” to describe his father’s tears, Thomas demonstrates how his father feels intense emotion about dying and encourages him not to let go of the will to live. The poem ends by including the recurring first and third line of the elegy at the very end, a powerful conclusion designed to show that his father, like all men, should never easily lose their fighting

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"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas subjects defiance against accepting death quietly. It talks about different ways on how men approach death in old age and encourage people to struggle to live until the last breath. Thomas uses figurative language to give deeper meanings to his work. Although the basic theme of this work is about death and old age, by using different figurative language such as metaphor and simile, it enables the reader to think more and see another theme like time is ticking, and before you know it, you may be on your deathbed. But since it was written during the dying moment of his father, Thomas might be thinking of death, and plea to him to defy it and rage against the dying light.

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Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Essay

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The poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas uses the metaphor of “light” as a symbol of life, and “darkness” as a symbol of death. By doing so, the poem establishes a dynamic between life and death, creating a theme of defiance against “darkness”, or rather, death. The metaphor of “light” in “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” is also used to illustrate the unstoppable nature of death and the regrets that come with it. It is also in this metaphor that Dylan Thomas emphasizes the central idea of the poem, i.e. do not resign yourself to death without a fight. Dylan Thomas creates a dynamic between life and death in his poem "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" by encouraging those who are facing death not to succumb to the "good night", but rather to "Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

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In the poem “Do not go gentle into that good night,” the poet uses a metaphor to compare death as “night” and “dying of the light.” Dylan Thomas repeats the lines “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” in each stanza to emphasize that all men should not accept death, but fight it until their last breath. He describes four types of dying men before addressing his father. First, he states that intelligent men that know death is near and have not had any impact on society still fight to live: “though wise men at their end know dark is right, / Because their words had forked no lightning they / do not go gentle into the good night.” (Lines 4-6).

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He is on the “sad height” (16), perhaps depressed as he grapples with the certainty of his death. Though still alive, he seems lifeless, allowing himself to quietly slip away, prompting the repeated line, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” (1). For Thomas, if his father cannot be happy at death, he desires him to at least be angry. Much of the language in the poem refers to anger and aggression.

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An example of imagery shown in the poem is “Though wise men at their end know dark is right, because their words had forked no lightning they Do not go gentle into that good night”. The first part of the quotation “Though wise men at their end know dark is right” shows that although people know that death is nearing, “because their words had forked no lightning,” which means that they have not done anything remarkable in the world, that they were most likely capable of doing, “they Do not go gentle into that good night,” which said before, means they do not let death come so easily. This clearly relates to the theme the struggle to survive as they do not want to die in order for them to do something before they die. Another example of imagery shown in the poem is the quotation “Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay”. In this quotation, the “good men” are people who are nearing death, as they wished they would have lived longer crying out what they could have done which is “crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay”.

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C) Dylan Thomas is the author of the poem “Do Not Go Gentle into the Night”. The poem general is about urging the individual who is in the death bed. The poet’s dad is in the passing bed, in this poem. He needs his dad to battle against death. He realizes that the passing is unavoidable.

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