Do Not Go Gentle Intot Hat Good Night

"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas is an appeal to his dying father to fight for his life and not let death take him easily. I honestly had to read the poem a few times to get a clear meaning of what Thomas was doing with it. In the first tercet he introduces the poem as a gentle resistance to death. He then uses each stanza to describe a certain type of man, old in age, and their attitudes to the death approaching them. The first man was good, the next wild, a grave man, and lastly his father. I read a little biography of Dylan Thomas and his attitude towards his father and it helped with the poem a lot. Thomas admired his father like no other. His father was an English Teacher and taught Thomas everything he knew. Dylan Thomas really got into poetry after reading some of the books in his father's shared library. Even before his father was stricken ill, Thomas still talked a lot of the cycle of life and death. It wasn't until his father got sick that it really meant something to him. You have to fight the inevitable things in life - as with the good night or death.

Living a life of reason is the goal of many people; a life of principle seems to make the acceptance of death easier. As American novelist Robert Byrne said, "The purpose of life is a life of purpose." When death arrives, people tend to examine the point of their life. Accordingly, many may feel scared as death approaches because they realize their life has been in vain. However, if a person manages to live a life of purpose, he or she can find solace in the fact that he or she may be immortalized because of their actions. Although people find comfort in this, Dylan Thomas does not. In Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," he writes of four classes of men: good men, wild men, grave men, and wise men. Two classes, grave and wild men, achieve their dreams in life...

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