Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night : Themes

Anger

The poem tells its reader to “rage” against dying, and it offers several examples of men who feel their lives unfulfilled, but it does not offer any reason why raging might be more appropriate than despair or peaceful acceptance of the absurdity of death. Anger is a heated, unreasoning emotion, and Thomas is too clever to try reasoning about it. By giving us the models of wise men, good men, wild men, and grave men, Thomas populates this poem with men who have all been in vigorous pursuit of something in their lives, and their anger would therefore result from frustration and disappointment. Although it could be said that these are admirable types of men, and that if they all reach the same conclusion having traveled there on different roads then it must be the correct one, they still do not achieve any comfort or satisfaction from raging — from not going gentle. The poem is expressed as advice, “choose rage,” but these men do not find their rage by choice.

So why does “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” advocate rage, if the details of the poem do not lead naturally to it? Anger is much more of a young man’s emotion than an old man’s, and anger’s value is that it can create a powerful feeling, even if it cannot beat death. In the final stanza, the speaker addresses his father “on that sad height.” Perhaps this poem is not meant to offer sound advice, but to show us a young man’s unreasonable, almost hysterical refusal to cope with the sad weakness of his father by evoking rage. Another possibility is that anger, though not completely satisfying, is considered here to be better than sadness.

Human Condition

As it is shown in “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” the human condition — the situation we all find ourselves presented with — is as simple as the contrast between light and dark. Life, the light, can be filled with any number of activities, but even the most noble of these turn out to be distractions that are easily forgotten as death approaches. The poem implies that the only adequate response to death is an emotional one, that humans cannot do anything with their lives that would make death a peaceful transition.

Still, in offering the four models for living that Thomas does in stanzas 2 through 5, he does give a sense that he has priorities as to how life can be lived. The poem examines the specific cases of good men, wise men, wild men, and grave men: in examining these and ignoring other ways of life, the poem seems to have selected them out of dozens of possibilities as being the only lifestyles that are worth serious consideration. Men who acquire great wealth, for example, are not mentioned, nor are holy men. Lives filled with humor or love are left out. It could be said that each of these unmentioned lives can be fit into one of the main categories, that for the purposes of this compact, tightly structured verse all people of the earth can be categorized as wise, good, wild or grave. If this is so, then the poem is only recognizing a narrow way to live. The question is whether these four types are meant to be the only way we can live or are the only ways of life that are important enough to consider.

Identity

This poem is addressed to the speaker’s father, which helps us put the poem’s stance in perspective. The angry attitude that the speaker tells his father to take is not necessarily suggested for all people, but is instead an emotional reaction to the imminent death of a figure of power. Thomas uses the formalized villanelle style to make a comment, not about death, but about standing by when a loved one faces death. The tight structure suggests an attempt to hold on to emotions.

The fact that sons identify with the circumstances of their fathers has been a constant throughout history, and the son of a father who projects a strong, controlling presence can be understandably disturbed at the prospect of watching the father’s power diminish. Thomas is on record as having written poems in response to his father’s death, and we know from interviews that his father was the sort of boisterous, lively man who was himself likely to rage against unfairness when he was in the best of health. In wishing to see the same indignation against death, the speaker of this poem is balancing fear of death against a primal, almost Freudian belief in the power of the father.

The examples of the wise, good, wild, and grave men extend this beyond a self-analytical poem about Thomas’s family and into the realm of an exploration of identity. By all accounts, Thomas’s father was not the sort of man one would instinctively use these words to describe. In examining these four categories, the speaker of this poem is identifying the kind of man he would like his father to be and, by extension, the kind of man he would like to be himself. The reference in line 5, to wise men experiencing disappointment because “their words had forked no light,” is particularly more appropriate to the poet than to his father. Likewise, the metaphor of sight and blindness in stanza 5 reflects Thomas’s understanding of poetic knowledge and its limitations, not necessarily his description of his father or anyone else. By using these examples, the poem’s speaker reveals ideals of what he would like to be before death.