Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night (reflection)

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

By Dylan Thomas

There is something somewhat eerie and unsettling about a poem discussing a fear of death written by a man who died before reaching 40yrs old.  This poem advocates all throughout not to “go gently” into “that good night”, which the poem reveals to mean death.  It’s hard to figure out exactly what Mr. Thomas means by “go gently”.  It seems to me that this poem advocates against a quiet death of disease or age, to not accept it willingly and to fight it off, even though it may be inevitable.

This poem presents several different perspectives from which one may approach the idea of death, but they all end in the same conclusion, that it is the enemy that must be fought but cannot be defeated.

I’m particularly drawn to the second stanza;

“Though wise men at their end know dark is right,

Because their words had forked no lightning

Do not go gentle into the night.”

This strikes a particular cord with me in saying that, though wise men may realize the inevitability of death and know that it is the natural way of things, they do not welcome it, presumably because their words and thoughts are ultimately ineffectual to the natural world and have confirmed and accomplished nothing tangible or lasting.

In the last stanza is particularly emotional and a bit jarring because he enters a first person perspective directed towards his father, emotional and urgent, as though his father were dying and he were there telling, rather, begging him to “rage against the dying of the light.