The theme of death is a similar idea explored by the poets, Dylan Thomas, Wilfred Owen and Kenneth Slessor. The literary devices, imagery and structure convey their messages of death.
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night and Five Bells explore death through natural causes in life while Dulce Et Decorum Est is Owen’s own experience as a soldier during World War One and Futility is Owen’s general perspective of life and death throughout.
The messages of death are conveyed through literary devices. In Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, Thomas expresses how people “do not go gentle into that good night”, meaning they do not give in to death. As an extended metaphor, it is repeated throughout the poem to emphasize how Thomas believes it
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Thomas in Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, uses a simile to describe how “blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay”. This simile shows how the “grave men” or serious men, try to resist death and they plan to leave with such an impact that they “blaze like meteors”. Similarly in Dulce Et Decorum Est, Owen’s imagery is conveyed through the use of similes. Owen implements similes to compare the soldiers to “beggars” and “hags” in the first two lines. This gives the audience a vivid image of how the young men, once strong, were now reduced by warfare to look like those who were sickly and crippled. Owen again uses a simile to describe a man who is a victim of a mustard gas attack. He is described as a man “Flound’ring… in fire or lime”. “Flound’ring”, normally refers to fish and “fire” and “lime” burns. Owen is comparing how the man is “flound’ring” like a fish and being burnt. The man dies and “his hanging face” haunts Owen as the life is escaping his “froth-corrupted lungs” through onomatopoeic words such as “gurgling” and “gargling”, . This aids the audience’s understanding of what the battlefield and the victims really looked like. Slessor uses metaphors in Five Bells to convey imagery that is dark and eerie like “one rip of darkness”. Slessor uses metaphors throughout his poem to convey how the darkness reminds him of his dead friend as Lynch was “so dark [he] bore no body, had no face”. The imagery of water is significant as it suggests time, one being a measurement while the other a reference to memory. Time is both “little fidget wheels” and “the flood that does not