to face death with gentle acceptance as God's will and as a transition to a better place where they will be greeted by loved ones. However, the speaker in this poem angrily denounces the idea of peacefully accepting one's end.

Using apostrophe, which is the direct address of an absent person or object, the speaker tells his father not to die in a "gentle" way. Instead, he urges his father to defy death. The speaker repeats the refrain:

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The speaker's grief and lack of acceptance of losing his father is revealed in his tone of fierce advice to him to fight as hard as he can to stay alive. Active, fiery images communicate this defiant tone. The speaker urges his father to be like "wild men" who "caught and sang the sun in flight." He then invokes the image of

Blind eyes [that] could blaze like meteors and be gay.

By using examples of other men who fought to stay alive in fiery ways, the speaker expresses his desire that his father mount the same kind of fierce resistance.

In analyzing the poem Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, you must consider that the poem's overall statement is that people should battle death.  Because the author wants his father to hold off death as long as he possibly can, he creates this poetic argument stating that we must go to our graves kicking and screaming rather than letting death take us.  Due to the nature of the poem, the language moves from fiery, to logical, and in the end becomes pleading.  After all, the speaker has no power over the actions of the listener; he can only try to convince.  His success or failure is not indicated at the end.  

The poem is broken into six stanzas.  The first stanza introduces the metaphor of night representing death.  The second line of the first stanza indicates that the old should burn and rage against death rather than lay back and let it come. Thomas is arguing that those who are old shouldn't slip easily into death but should rather fight with everything they have.  

The tone shifts in the second stanza.  Rather than making the emotional statement of stanza one, Dylan has the speaker make a more rational argument.  The speaker begins talking about the knowledgeable man.  According to the speaker, wise men know that death cannot be cheated through philosophy; however, they also fight the end because they have not contributed enough and wish to make a more substantial impact on the world.  This argument is meant to be a proof that if wise men fight, so should the listener.  

The third stanza, like the second, is an example.  This time he talks about "good men" who have done good things.  These religious men should not fear the grave because they are right in the eyes of God—but in the end they too must fight because the good they have done is not enough.  Their good deeds cannot save them from inevitable death.  The water reference here is often interpreted as the nature of good men, who are like ocean waves and crash against the rocks in the end rather than continuing as rolling waves.  This is also an argument for the listener: no matter how good one is in the eyes of God, one should fight death to continue more works for their redemption.  

The fourth stanza refers to the actions of "wild men." Wild men are those who celebrate the passage of time or those who celebrate often.  These people, as said in the second line of the stanza, find out that their time was wasted on frivolity and they mourn the sunset.  This stanza, unlike the previous ones, seems to be more of a moral warning rather than a comment on the actions of others.  

The fifth stanza describes "grave men."  Grave is a beautiful pun in this section of the poem, since it talks about those who are so near death that they have lost their sight.  Because they have lost so much, they fight to retain what they still have.  It is important to note that the speaker compares their actions to the blazing of falling stars.  This stanza, like the fourth stanza, has a slightly different feel than the first two arguments.  In this section of the poem Dylan is getting closer to the actual truth of the poem.  He is speaking to a man who has accepted death and is arguing that he is doing wrong by accepting he is blind and useless.  This stanza connects to the final stanza as an argument for the dying father—thus the line in stanza six asking for the father to weep in anger upon hearing this poem.  This section is by far the most significant for the intended listener.  

The sixth and final stanza of the poem reveals the intended listener for the poem.  The speaker addresses his father, urging him to get angry.  The duality of the line that begins "Curse, bless..." in line two is significant because the argument he might have with his father over death would be a blessing if it returned the fire of determination to his father.  The final two lines of the sixth stanza switch the tone from authoritative to pleading as he begs his father to return to him.  

Several themes exist in the poem, including death, old age, family bonds, and the shortness of life.  The shifts in the poem happen at the beginning and the end of the poem.  The first of the two shifts is between the first and the second stanza where the speaker moves between making the statement that all men should rage against death to discussing the ways that various men approach death.  I mentioned the second above, where in the sixth stanza the author's tone moves into a pleading rather than authoritative tone.  The emotional appeal for the father to fight just a bit longer is far more touching than the other five stanzas' appeals.  

To further help in your analysis of the poem, take a look at the attached file.  This schema reveals the number of times different words are used throughout the poem.  Look at the words that were used the most and compare them to the overall theme of the poem.  Last, while you didn’t ask for this information, the poem is written in a very specific style called villanelle.  It is quite mathematical.  I am providing a link that will tell you more about it.  This poem is often compared to Coleridge’s Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.  Interestingly enough, this poem is successfully analyzed against Mr. Tambourine Man by Bob Dylan in the movie “Dangerous Minds.”   If you are still having trouble with your analysis I highly recommend watching that part of the movie where the two poems are brought together.  I'm providing a link to the YouTube section where the students are analyzing Tambourine Man.  

Tone and mood are often confusing terms. Tone is the author's attitude toward the work; we can used words like positive, negative, sarcastic, critical, and sympathetic, for example,to describe tone.

Mood, on the other hand, pertains to the emotional atmosphere in the work. Sad, happy, melancholy, and delighted are words that can describe mood.

The exact setting for this Thomas poem is unknown except that the speaker is at the bedside of his father who is dying. The tone (often referred to as voice in a poem) is urgent; he wants his father to fight against death, to "rage against the dying of the light." As he sits next to his dying father whom he loves, his mood is a mixture of despair ("What if he should actually die now?" he may ask himself) and anger ("How can this be happening to my father?" he may question.).

Both are great poems and this sounds like an excellent assignment.

I would say that the tone in "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Goodnight" is a mixture of somber desperation. The speaker accepts that his father is at the very end of his life and is about to die, yet he is trying to awaken what little life he has left to persuade him to fight death, rather than allowing himself to be taken.

Each stanza starts off with an example of a different type of person who has fought death: "Good men," "Wise men," "Grave men," "And you, my father..."

The speaker is listing as many convincing examples as he can think of. He closes each stanza with the same line, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." The repetition of the word "rage" her is used for emphasis. Saying it once is not enough. You can hear his desperation as the word and this line are both repeated.

A quick note on "When You Are Old":

This poem's tone is much softer and more romantic. He is writing, specifically to his real-life love, Maud Gonne, about the way he wishes to imagine her as an old woman. She is warm and comfortable, "nodding by the fire," and he wants her to accept the end of her life remembering that she was loved:

I've included some links at the bottom of this post that might help you further.

Good luck!

First, it's necessary to understand the meanings of denotation and connotation.

Denotation refers to a word or phrase's literal meaning; in this case, the denotation of "good night" would be exactly what the phrase literally says: that the night is good in some way. 

Conversely, connotation refers to the implied associations or meanings that go along with a word or phrase. In this case, because Thomas' poem is usually taken as a discourse on death, we can assume that the phrase "good night" connotes death and dying. Knowing this distinction between the two terms, it should be relatively straightforward for you to pick out other words in the poem with strong connotations; there are plenty of them!

As far as time and attitude to life in the poem goes, that's a somewhat tricky question. Generally, based Thomas' orders to "rage, rage against the dying of the light," in addition to his desire to "not go gentle into that good night," we can assume that Thomas constructs a defiant attitude toward death and mortality. Rather than simply fading away with old age, Thomas urges us to live to the fullest, to rebel against the frailty of our mortality. As such, he views time in general, the process by which we pass closer to the moment when we must die, as a dynamic entity, something that is meant to be truly lived in, rather than passively existed in. 

There are other connotations in this wonderful poem, and I will list a few. First, a connotation is the implied or underlying meaning of a word or phrase. Basically, a word or phrase can have both a literal and implicit meaning.

In the poem, Thomas suggests that "wise men at their end know dark is right." Here, the poet is saying that wise men understand the inevitability of death and that they accept it ("dark is right"). Here, "dark" refers to both the absence of light (literal meaning) and death (connotative meaning).

Despite their wisdom, however, these men do not "go gentle into that good night." Although wise men accept the inevitability of death, they do not embrace it unequivocally. We can accept something and yet, dislike its reality.

Here's another connotation: Thomas says that even good men "rage against the dying of the light." Here, "light" refers to both literal illumination and the breath of life (connotative meaning). Thomas is saying that, even good men (towards the end of their lives) harbor regrets about dying. They insist that a longer life would have increased their ability to make a greater impact upon the world.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay . . . .

And, here's yet another connotation:

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way . . . .

Here, Thomas talks about wild men who "caught and sang the sun in flight." The "sun in flight" refers to both the literal sun that rises and sets each day, as well as daring feats and adventures. Thomas tells us that wild men live exciting lives and do not realize the limitations of such a life until it is too late.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay . . . .

In the above lines, "grave men" has a double meaning. The literal meaning of "grave" is "solemn" or "somber." Meanwhile, the connotative meaning references somber men who are themselves near death. They are "grave" men, fast approaching the time when they will be buried in a grave.

You could certainly address the fact that the speaker uses myriad types of men to prove to his father that everyone, no matter how wise they are or how well they've lived, fights death in the end; he then uses this argument to claim that his father ought to fight too.  

He argues that, although they know they must and should die, wise men fight death because they feel they've not had enough impact on the world.  Good men fight death because they want more opportunity to do good works in the world.  Wild men who seemed to make the most out of every moment, regret, in the end, that they did not, and so they fight death as well.  Finally, serious men, nearing death, realize that they could have been happier during their lives, and so they rage against death.  Finally, then, he says to his father, "And you, my father, there on the sad height, / Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears [...]."  He's speaking to his father, who is just about to die, and he begs him to fight fiercely, though it will be both a blessing and a curse.  A life extended seems like a blessing, but pain or disease extended seems like a curse; still, the narrator selfishly desires his father to fight death and has tried to convince him that this is what everyone -- including the best men -- do, and so he should do it too.

Dylan Thomas directed the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" to his dying father, though his father did not in fact die until several years later. It may have been that Thomas' father fell into sickness, and recovered. In any case, the poem seems to be written so.

While the refrain of the poem is one of the most famous in poetry—

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

—the poem seems to be less about the person dying in the poem than about the poet himself, who seems to have not come to any peace with death. The poem is littered with grief and remorse over things undone:

"Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night."'

In other words, these men 'forked no lightning', created no light in the dark, therefore their work is undone, and thus the railing against the coming of the night.

The poem is one of a poet questioning the purpose of his own life, and in transference, layering it over the death of another. The poet fears his own death, whether aware of that or not, and tells himself in the poem to rail against it, while he still has time.

The first three lines provide the basis of the thematic exploration of aging, death, and resistance which are reiterated throughout the poem.  The title and first line of the poem help to bring this out.  It seems to be a call or demand from one person to another to resist or fight the acquiescence to another force.  In this setting, a loved one is speaking to another one to resist the force of death which is defined as a "good night."  Fearing that the succumbing to death will render one as passive and devoid of the uniquely human qualities of resistance and intensity, the second line finds the speaker suggesting that there should be a certain type of "rave" and continual stoking of the life force (seen as fire in the term "burns") when confronted with the inevitable force of death.  The third line of the stanza is repeated throughout the poem in its demand of resistance against the forces of silence and death.  The first stanza sets up Thomas's assertion that fighting and intensity are youthful qualities that should never be lost nor silenced no matter the adversary.

Dylan Thomas wrote the poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” during the time his father was ill and dying.  Critics believe that Thomas was trying to come to terms with the possibility of losing his father  because they were so close. 

Form

The form of the poem is five tercets [three line stanzas] with a quatrain [four line stanza] at the end. The rhyme scheme in each tercet is ABA with the quatrain’s scheme ABAA. The rhyme scheme focuses on the words night and day. 

Summary

The first tercet presents the poem’s theme of resisting death.  It also gives the first refrain line that alternates by ending every other stanza: “Rage, rage, against the dying of the night.”  The first line of the stanza uses the word gentle implying the opposite to the elderly who are near death to not give up.  The older person should burn and rage against the light going out in his life.

The second tercet begins the references to four kinds of old men who have different attitudes toward death.  In this stanza, Thomas refers to “wise men.” This could mean teachers or philosophers who weigh everything and then make  decisions.  These men realize that death is inevitable.   On the other hand, they should not give in to death passively.  The second alternate refrain is at the end of this stanza: “Do not go gentle into that good night.

The third tercet describes good men who will be the last to go.  They have not risen to their potential.  These men should fight against death for it comes too soon for them.

In the fourth tercet the wild men are those who have lived their lives to the fullest.  These men are not likely to believe or accept that they will age and die as well.

The fifth tercet speaks about the grave men who are serious yet blind.  However, they can see into things better than someone who can actually see.  Here the poet contrasts which show the difference between serious men and those who are not blind: grave versus gay and blind versus sight.

The sixth stanza indicates his father may  have given up. Again, Thomas reminds him to fight against dying. He asks his father to curse or bless him.  He prays that his father will not go forward toward death without fighting for his life.

And you, my father; there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

Literary devices

Comparisons and personication are used to illustrate the poem’s idea.  The good men in tercet three complain that the deeds that they were not able to complete would have danced in the bay. 

In tercet four, the wild men caught and sang to the sun who was running away or in flight.

In tercet five, the poet used an oxymoron [a phrase that combines contradictory terms] with the phrase blinding sight…

In that same stanza, the blind eyes are compared in a simile to meteors.

 Theme

The theme of the poem comes from the idea of anger.  When Thomas mentions the wise men, good men, wild men, and grave men, it is understood that these men have been in pursuit of something all of their lives.  Their rage would come from the frustration that they felt because they did not complete their search.  The poem also shows the author’s anger with the forthcoming death of his father.  

One thing that is certain-- everyone faces death.  Thomas advises that men should not just lie down and die; but rather, a person should fight to live until the end of his time. 

This amazing poem is actually an elegy, which is a poem that mourns the death of someone or laments something lost. Dylan Thomas wrote this poem during the time of his father's death, and we can see that this poem above all urges his father to not yield submissively to its force, but to fight against the encroaching power of death. The poem above all states that those who are truly wise engage in this struggle even when they know that their defeat at the hands of death is inevitable, and as the poem ends, the poet expectantly looks for some kind of response to show that his father has heard his words and is struggling.

Structurally, what is fascinating about this poem is that it is a villanelle, which has a complex form involving the repetition of lines and also a fixed rhyme scheme involving only two rhymes in its nineteen lines divided into five tercets and one quatrain. The villenelle therefore is not an easy form to use, and yet Thomas manages to make the key repetition of the central lines of "Do not go gentle into that good night" and "Rage, rage against the dying of the night" appear to be spontaneous and not forced. In particular, the repetition of these lines adds to the cumulative intensity of the poem, making for a stunning and powerful final quatrain as these two lines are united:

And you, my father, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The emotional intensity of this final stanza as we imagine the son next to his dying father, willing him to show any signs of resistance in the struggle against death is extremely powerful and poignantly moving. The central message of how we should struggle against the power of death is reinforced through this repetition.

As you state in your question, Dylan Thomas, in his poem "Do Not Go Gently Into that Good Night," rejects the convential passive approach to death.

One of the ways that Thomas emphasizes this point is both extremely simple and extremely effective: he repeats it, in identical words, numerous times.  Each stanza of the poem contains either the phrase "Do not go gentle into that good night," or "Rage, rage against the dying of that good night."  This simple technique of repetition--known as anaphora--helps Thomas to hammer home his point in memorable fashion.

Thomas expresses one of your other points--that people should live their lives to the fullest--through the use of several striking images.  There are:

"Wise men...[whose] words had forked no lightning";

"Good men...[whose} deeds might have danced in a green bay";

"Grave men...[whose] eyes could blaze like meteors."

These images are much more interesting and memorable than simply saying, "Live life to the fullest."

Your other point,  that emotionality is part of our humanity, is--of course--a major theme of the poem.

The poem is about people who, logically speaking, have nothing more to live for.  They have arrived at "old age," "at [the] close of day"; they are "at their end"; they are "near death."

Yet, the poet urges them to "Rage, rage against the dying of the light."  He does not mean that they should seek some miracle treatment for their ailments.  Rather, he is urging them to react to death with a vigorous emotion of rebellion.

In his villanelle, which normally has an idyllic sentiment, Thomas addresses his father in second person, urging him to reject conventionality, just as he reject the conventional form of the villanelle.  Using the imperative mood and the commanding voice, the poet tells his father to "Fight to the last gasp" as written in Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part I.

In the second stanza Thomas uses the unusual metaphor of "forked no lightning." Forked lighting is a phenonmenon that commands attention, so when the wise men realize that they no longer draw attention, they still "do not go gentle into that good night."  Here Thomas uses the phrase "do not go gentle" in a declarative, rather than imperative phrase while he continues his persuasive argument to his father.

To continue his argument of raging against death, Thomas tells his father that good men have had the foresight of the wise men to not give up in the face of death.  Wild men have learned too late, and lament their lack of foresight, yet even they do not "go gently into the night." Finally, grave men ""who see with blinding sight," with insight, that all have "raged against the dying of the light," they, too do not easily die. So, too, should his father emulate them, and love his family enough to fight against death.

With Thomas's use of the imperative mood and unconventional form and sentiments, he makes his point of the wiseness and goodness of fighting against death. 

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I  pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into the Night" was written as a plea to his dying father, David John Thomas, an English grammar teacher who had a powerful influence in his life.  Ironically, Dylan Thomas himself died a year later.

While the poem has three parts to it, it is an affirmation of life to the last breath, a refusal to die quietly and passively.  In the first part, the speaker provides an introduction to the speaker's message.  Then, in the four stanzas that follow, the speaker provides examples of what he means.  In telling his father to "rage against the night," the speaker offers examples of what wise, good, brave, and wild men have done:

Old age should burn and rave at close of day

Good men,....crying how bright their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight

Finally, in the last stanza, the tone is much more personal as the speaker addresses father exhorting him to fight against death as a man should.

And, you, my father, there on that sad height,/Curse, bless me now, with your fierce tears, /I pray

Do not go gentle into the night.

IN my opinion, the main theme of this poem is old age and death and the ways in which people should face those things.

The speaker in the poem repeatedly urges that people should not just give up.  They should not "go gentle."  Instead, they need to fight against what happens to their bodies as they grow old.  And they need to fight for as long as they can against death.

The speaker is also saying that we should keep trying to do whatever our life's work was.  We should realize we haven't done all we want and so we should keep raging, keep fighting, as long as we can.

Tone describes the poet's attitude toward the subject of the work. Given the speaker's position, as someone who fears that he is about to lose his father to death, who begs his father, who is "there on the sad height" to "Curse, bless, [him] now with [...] fierce tears," the poet seems rather sympathetic to the speaker. The speaker seems to desperately want his father to resist "the dying of the light" and to "burn and rave" rather than go quietly into the darkness of his final rest. The speaker spends much of the poem detailing the different ways that different types of people fight against death and refuse to go gently, hoping to inspire his own father to do so as well. Wise men, good men, wild men, grave men: they all rage against death. However, there's also this sense that, rage as they might, no one can successfully resist death; it is inevitable, and this leads to a further tone of inevitability and even resignation.

In a word:  defiant.

The speaker of the poem is pitting the power of life against the power of death as his father lays dying,  the elder ready to succumb to the force that is larger than he.

The son, however, is still full of the "green fuse that drives the flower"  (the subject of another Thomas' poem).   The power of life is still coursing through the younger man's veins.   He can hardly believe that the vibrancy he feels could possibly wane so much that its heat could fail to overcome the coldness of death. 

Thus, the speaker urges his father, alternately, in each stanza to:

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

and to resist the frigid hand of death.  The speaker orders his patriarch (possibly out of fear that his own pulsing life-force may also one day be subject to decline) to resist with all his might, saying, over and over:

Do not go gentle into that good night.

In this poem, Dylan Thomas is at the deathbed of his father, and is pleading with him to die with honor and pride, fighting until the very end.  He doesn't want his father to just give up and turn his life over, he wants his dad to fight death off, to "rage, rage against the dying of the light" and to stay with him as long as he can.  Throughout the poem, Thomas gives examples of all types of men who, when dying, fight it off.  His gist is that it doesn't matter what type of life you have led, or what type of man you were, all men should fight death off.

In the second stanza, Dylan Thomas refers to how "wise men" know that dying is the right thing to do; they "know dark is right."  So, before death, they know it is their time.  But, still, these wise men regret leaving the earth because "their words forked no lightning."  This is just a fancy way of saying that they never had much influence with their lives; they never gave great speeches with powerful words that inspired people, they never wrote profound novels or essays, and they never spoke or inspired with their words in a way to make them be super influential in life.  "Forked no lightning" is a way of saying their words didn't have power, intensity, and beauty (like lightning).  And, because these men's words did not do this in their lives, they don't want to die, and so they too "do not go gentle into that good night" when they die.  They regret not having been more profound while alive.  That is just one of the type of men that Thomas refers to in his poem, of the many that "rage against the dying of the light."

I hope that those thoughts helped; good luck!

You are only allowed to ask one question rather than several on enotes. I have edited your question accordingly and will focus on the theme of this poem.

I think the biggest theme that emerges from this carefully constructed poem is the idea of how we meet death and face it in our lives. Dylan of course is addressing his father as he is dying, and if we read the poem carefully we can clearly see how he is encouraging his father to meet death head on:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.

Thus the cry of Thomas if for his father to not submit quietly to death, but to "rage" against it even though their submission to death is inevitable. Thomas continues the poem by referring to four kinds of men who all find reasons to rage against the coming of death. This then culminates in the moving and defiant last stanza, as Thomas explicitly addresses his father:

And you, my fahter, there on the sad height,

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

Do not go gentle into that good night.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The main point of this poem is therefore that all people should try to find some way to fight against death.

An original poet of great power and beauty, Dylan Thomas writes to his dying father, "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," a poem constructed in the form of a villanelle. This personal message is deeply personal and filled with a violence of imagery and emotion.

Interestingly, the villanella and villancico were originally Spanish and Italian dance songs that celebrated life. So, there is the suggestiveness of the enjoyment of life all the way to the end even in the poetic form that Thomas has chosen, as well as in the content. This villanelle has the traditional form of 19 lines which consist of 5 tercets followed by a quatrain. There are 2 refrains that are accompanied by 2 repeating lines. The first and third lines of the first tercet are alternately repeated throughout the poem until the last stanza. This stanza concludes the poem by repeated both the first and third lines. (Thus, one can imagine how this form was once a dance song.)

Thomas's verses are indeed powerful as he constructs a moving and strident plea to his father to affirm life until the very end rather than to submit passively to death. In the second tercet, Thomas explains that the good deeds that he and others have done might show to better advantage if more men were to "rage against the dying of the night" because their words might have "forked...lightning." 

This plea to rage against death affirms Thomas's major theme of the continuing process of life and death and new life that links the generations to each other. He rails against those whose minds are closed to this idea in his metaphoric expressions of "the dying of the light" and "blinding sight." For instance, in the fifth stanza, with his typical violent imagery, Thomas writes:

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay....

Dylan Thomas's carefully crafted poem, whose rhyme scheme is constructed around the two contrasting words, "night" and "day," also provides several contrasting images, such as "blind" and "blaze," "curse" and "bless." This use of contrasts contributes greatly to the intensity of meaning and highly personal tone of very emotional poem. "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" is, indeed, a powerful and intense work of art.