Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1951

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

The Vitality of Life

With its memorable double refrain, Thomas’s poem urges his readers to fight death as hard as they can in order to preserve their own vitality, no matter the fact that death is inevitable. He opens with the first refrain, which he phrases as a command: “Do not go gentle into that good night” (Line 1), wherein night represents death. The second refrain restates this idea with greater emphasis by using the forceful word “Rage” (Line 3) twice in a row. The speaker advises that readers throw caution to the wind, even become violent, to keep hold of their lives while they still can.

Throughout the poem, Thomas associates cosmic sources of light with human life, emphasizing the energizing forces that the speaker wants to harness in order to preserve life. This symbolism points to the great value and joy of life, which one often doesn’t perceive until life draws to a close. Even the people without inhibitions—those “who caught and sang the sun in flight” (Line 10) and reveled in each day of existence—still have reasons to mourn and to struggle against death.

Thomas’s sequence of men—sages, saints, and madmen—all find themselves facing the inevitable fact of their demise, yet still the speaker insists that they turn away from this inevitability and delay it by focusing on their remaining life force. They experience a spectrum of reactions, but the speaker demands that they reject the pull of accepting death gently and instead use their remaining strength to “burn and rave” (Line 2) against it. Even though “dark is right” (Line 4) and entering the long night of death is a natural stage of the life cycle, the speaker urges those approaching death to claw at every last possible second of life they have left.

Grief & Loss

After addressing a series of generalized groups throughout the poem, the speaker narrows his audience to a specific and highly meaningful person: his father. The speaker reveals that his meditations on death come from grappling with the end of his father’s life. One might surmise that he has been reasoning with his father all along. Perhaps the speaker has argued that no matter what kind of man his father considers himself, whether wise or wild, he should follow the examples Thomas provides, fighting against his illness with more intensity.

The speaker refers to his “father, there on the sad height” (Line 16). This may refer to a literal high place such as a deathbed, or to an imagined future place of post-death honor, like a funeral bier or pyre. The speaker’s tone reflects his love for his father with raw desperation: “Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray” (Line 17). He prays, seeming not to care whether his father speaks kindness or cruelty. This cry begs for some connection between father and son as the father’s life drains away. The speaker ends with both refrains, insistent pleas that his father remain alive.

Life Lessons

In the central section of the poem, the speaker employs the experiences of four different groups of individuals, each of whom have learned something significant about life and living throughout their experience. The second stanza addresses the experience of “wise men” (Line 4) whose knowledge at the end of their lives reveals that they have done very little throughout their lives; the speaker suggests that to be wise is to know that the act of living has little effect on others or the world.

In the third stanza, “good men” (Line 7) understand the passage of time as an opportunity to do good for others. Though the speaker describes the men themselves as “good,” their good deeds are described as “frail” (Line 8), suggesting that the goodness of moral actions over the course of one’s time is just as fleeting as the images of reflections on water in the “green bay” (Line 8) of life.

The “wild men” (Line 10) of the fourth stanza live life to the fullest, according to the speaker, but they experience grief upon realizing the emptiness of their choices at the end of life. The speaker encourages these men to put their self-knowledge to good use when death arrives, so that they may live differently going forward.

Finally, “grave men” (Line 13), who are closest to death as the word-play of “grave” implies, have the clearest understanding of life, and this knowledge of life’s beauty and potential revitalizes them in their last moments as they revive with eyes that “could blaze like meteors and be gay” (Line 14).

The emotional qualities of these life lessons are heightened by the timing at which such realizations take place. The four groups of individuals addressed in the poem all recognize the importance of their knowledge just as their lives are ending, at a time when it is too late to act in response to their learning.