Dec 19, 2009

Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night | A Plea to the Dying

In the following essay, Hochman suggests that the contradiction inherent in Thomas's instructions to "rage against" a death that he terms a "good night" serves as a plea to the dying to show their love for those whom they leave behind.

While Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" could be addressed to anyone, by the end of the last stanza, the reader realizes that the specific addressee is Thomas's sick father. In this poem he never sent, the son entreats his father not to accept death quietly, but instead, to fight it. While the more usual-sentiment counsels accepting death peacefully and gracefully, something more provocative is at work here: that is, though death is a "good night" in its romantic or hopeful sense of restful bedtime and peaceful darkness, one should not accept it, and instead "rage"...