Poetry Essay.... What would you grade it???

Linda Brown
Dr. Gerard Collins
English 1080
A Critical Analysis for the Poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night”
“Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas is from the perspective of a son to his father. Using examples of wise, good, wild and grave men, the speaker is trying to convince his father that, although each man is different, each faces the “dying of the light”, physical or emotional blindness, with the same resistance. He wants his father to resist as well.
In this poem, emotional blindness is a lack of emotions or feelings, and because life is comprised of these things we can further say that emotional blindness is a man’s inability to absorb life. The word “light” emphasizes the concept of losing sight. Light is what enables one to see and without it we could not. “Dying of the light” could indicate the inability to see the positive, bright things in life. The speaker is trying to show his father that he should never become emotionally numb, even if his father is “on a sad height”, or, is dealing with an emotionally blinding experience.
The wise men do not give up on life even if their words have “forked no lightning;” their words have not caused anything brilliant or wondrous to spread. The good men do not succumb to emotional darkness even when their “frail deeds” were not powerful enough to dance, or cause celebration, in a “green bay,” or their worlds, societies or environments. The speaker uses examples of men to show his father that all of them, regardless of their situation, do not let go of life so easily.

The poem’s diction creates contrast within each stanza to show that despite the opposites presented, each stanza ends the same. This structure reinforces the theme of striving to stay emotionally alive under all circumstances by showing that men should choose to resist when blindness approaches, and struggle to emotionally survive . There are beautiful, positive words, and dark, sorrowful words. Some words that give evidence to this are “bright”, “danced”, “sang” and “gay”, contrasted with “frail”, “grieved”, and “death”, each stanza ending with either of the repeated lines stating men should not lose connection with their emotional lives, whether internal, interpersonal or external.
The last stanza in this poem is especially significant. The speaker says, “Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.” This line indicates that the speaker wishes to be cursed and blessed with his father’s sorrows. Cursed because the tears indicate his father has now accepted that his life is forever changed, and this may be a hard realization, and blessed, for the same reason, and that they can now move forward and continue living life. He not only wishes, but prays, that his father will let the burdens be carried by him so he can continue to live. It is at this point the reader realizes the speaker‘s message. The two lines that have been repeated throughout the poem end this stanza, as a somewhat desperate plea to his feather to “rage against the dying of the light.”