Review: Do not go gentle into that good night
The poem, Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas is, in my opinion, an excellent poem. While having the ordinary structure of a villanelle, this poem is in many ways a unique poem. It uses the qualities of deliberate repetition, intense language, active anger and hostility, and contrasting elements such as night and day and darkness and light effectively.
A unique feature of this is that each of the principal words in line 1 are paired with their opposites in line 3. For example, in line one, one of the key words is 'gentle,' opposite to the word 'rage' in line 3. Similarly, in line one, the words 'good' and 'dying' are paired together, along with the words 'night' and 'day.' The poem lucratively uses deliberate repetition. Sentences such as "Rage, rage against the dying of the night" and "Do not go gentle into that good night" are recurring.
English: Alexander Blok's poem 'Noch, ulica, fonar...
Group portrait with Thomas Alva Edison and Sir Tho...
Thomas Chalmers, Century Opera (LOC)I think this done intentionally to make the point of the poet strong and clear. He wants to make it lucid that he wants his father to "rage" against dying, implicating that he wants him to be strong and fight death rather than give in to it.
The men that Thomas describes in the poem are "wise men," "good men," and "wild men," and "grave men." He in describing these men tells of men who have dynamically fought in pursuit something in their lives, and these men are angry because they have not achieved what they yearned to achieve in their lifetime. By mentioning these men, it is evident that he is trying to aspire his father into becoming one of these angry men, who rage death, rather than peacefully "go gentle into that good night."...