Spring Break Poetry Essay

Prompt:  Write an essay in which you describe the speaker's attitude toward the father's death. Using specific references from the text, show how the use of language reveals the speaker's attitude.

Why it fits: This prompt fits Dylan Thomas’s poem because the author’s attitude plays a significant role in defining the theme. Analyzing the tone is especially important in this poem because the assertive and desperate tone heavily implies the author’s message.

Essay:

In Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night, Dylan Thomas implies a desperate yet assertive attitude towards the dying father. His use of symbolism and repetition together reveals the tone by clearly stating his message through the use of symbols like “light” and “dark”.  

The line “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” is used several times by the dying father’s child.  The repetition of this line has a powerful effect in portraying a desperate tone. The words “rage, rage” suggests a strong attitude towards the coming of death, and even though the speaker knows that death is inevitable, the speaker still urges his father in despair to fight against the “good night”. The title of the poem itself is also repeated several times throughout the poem. The “good night” refers to death, and the author clearly states to not “go gentle” into it, meaning to not accept death peacefully. The repetition of the two lines grasp the theme of the poem, which is to fight with all of your might against the moment of death and not just merely accept it in calm. This literary technique in effect implies that the author’s attitude is assertive, and also desperate at the same time.

Symbolism is another literary technique that Thomas uses to convey his tone. He refers to “wise men, good men, wild men and grave men” representing the different types of people. He is saying that no matter who you are, you will eventually meet the “dark” and lose sight of the “bright”. The author even juxtaposes “blind eyes could blaze like meteors” in that blind eyes can be seen as dull, while meteors are often bright with blaze. This effect suggests the desperate tone in that the speaker wants to see even “grave men” to rage against death all while knowing that these men will pass away. The “fierce tears” that the child sees is a physical representation of the rage, and adds weight to creating the desperate attitude the author conveys.

In the poem by Dylan Thomas, literary techniques such as symbolism and repetition effectively reveals the the desperate and assertive tone. The words “rage”, “dark”, and “light” are frequently used to clearly imply the symbolic meaning it holds to suggest the theme. The two tones evident throughout helps the reader understand the idea of fighting against old age and death, rather than calmly waiting for it.