John Donne's Defiant Tone

John Donne and Dylan Thomas use a similarly defiant tone to recommend that Death is an enemy that must be resisted. Donne wrote in his poem “Death, be not proud” about a speaker expressing his strong feelings towards death. In addition, Thomas wrote about how humans should react when they are near death or in their death bed in his poem “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night,” Donne and Thomas use a defiant tone against death to encourage readers to believe that they have the ability to control their fate and that death is only used as a tool and has no real power

First off, Donne uses a defiant tone to recommend that death is an enemy that must be resisted. In this poem, the speaker is addressing death directly and challenges him while giving the readers the impression that he is weak. In the first example, Donne writes in the two introductory lines of the poem, “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;” In this quotation, the speaker of the poem directly addresses Death fearlessly and basically tells him not to be conceited, that he is not as powerful as everyone seems

In this case, he writes directly to the readers with persuasive encouragement that it is possible to resist death with maximal effort, effectively giving the readers the impression that their fate is in their own hands. For example, in lines one, six, twelve and eighteen, the speakers states “Do not go gentle into that good night,” The reason behind the repetition is indoctrinate the readers with the idea that one should not give in easy to the dying light, and instead should resist it. Furthermore, the speaker gives vigorous commands in lines three, nine, fifteen and nineteen saying “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” In this quotation, the Speaker commands the readers with an intense tone to motivate them to use their anger against