Do Not Go Gentle into That Goodnight by Dylan Thomas

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas [1914-1953]

Relevant Background

Dylan Thomas was born at home in Swansea, Wales in 1914.

His parents were middle class. His father was a schoolmaster in English at the local grammar school.

Dylan Thomas was anxious in himself as a child and sometimes unwell.

He was often absent from school and dropped out at sixteen. He preferred to read on his own.

He did very well in English and reading, but neglected other subjects.

As a poet it is clear that Dylan Thomas enjoyed playing with language.

‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’ is an emotional and touching appeal to his dying father not to die.

Though Dylan’s father was an English teacher, he didn’t like his job.

However, Dylan was always grateful to his father for giving him a love of literature.

Thomas feared, respected, and deeply loved his father.

His father had been ill a long time without realising that he was dying.

Thus he couldn’t show his father this emotional poem.

Dylan Thomas spoke this poem to his father in his mind, but not in real life.

The poem is a villanelle. A villanelle is made up of five stanzas of three lines followed by a final stanza of four lines. See the note on ‘Form’ below.

It is normal for two of the lines to be repeated in a pattern throughout the poem.

So even though it is a nineteen-line poem, there are only thirteen individual lines of poetry to understand.

Dylan Thomas’ poetry is known for its vivid and often fantastic imagery.

He drank himself to death in a drinking session in New York City in 1953.

Summary

In the first stanza or tercet the poet urges his very ill father to fight his illness.

It is expressing a hope rather than an actual command because his father never heard the poem.

Dylan Thomas declares that even in old age the old should violently resist their death.

The poet urges his father to angrily hold on to his life.

In the second stanza, Thomas states that wise men may know that death is natural but they too resist death violently.

They hold on because they realise they have not made a sufficient impact on society with their wisdom.

In the third stanza, Thomas states that honest men don’t accept their death because they want to live on to give more good example to others.

In the fourth stanza, Thomas states that men who lived mad and wild lives don’t give in at the end. Thomas describes them as men who enjoy the sunny side of life so long they miss it and cry for it as they die.

In the fifth stanza, Thomas states that men who lived serious lives are angry at death because they realise that they could have lived energetic and passionate lives instead.

In the final stanza, Thomas addresses his father in his mind. He wishes that his father would give him his blessing but also curse him out of jealousy for continuing to live.

Themes

A Son's Love For His Father

The entire poem is an appeal to his father to stay alive and to bless his son at the end. He asks his father not to die politely. Rather he wants his father to curse his illness and fight it.

Resist Death

The poem is a passionate call to people to fight death. The poem simply says ‘don’t die’. No one should give up his or her life without a fight. The poem supports a sort of spiritual rebellion against death. Use the points in the summary of the poem to develop this as the main theme of the poem.

Life Is Joyful And Precious

Many images and words in the poem suggest that life is delightful. The idea that your eyes ‘could blaze like meteors and be gay’ suggests that life is energetic and happy. The image of dancing in a green bay suggests the beauty of the world we live in.