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Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

by Dylan Thomas

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How does "Do not go gentle into that good night" depict the relationship between humans and nature?

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The poem is about the human reaction to death. The speaker describes how people react to their own demise, which he compares to nature, and shows that not everyone faces death quietly. As death approaches, the speaker says that men should be raging against it. He says that "wise men" do not go gentle into that good night but rage, rage against the dying of the light (line 5). The speaker goes on to say that even wise men find themselves in a situation where they are afraid of what's going to happen next. Even though they know that eventually this is something all people must face, there's no comfort in knowing or in facing it. Some even feel like their lives have been wasted.

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First, the poem makes use of a central metaphor comparing death to night. Conversely, light is associated with life so that the "dying of the light" that occurs when night sets in is another way of describing death. In this way, our life is connected to nature's light, and our death is connected to nature's night; the span of a human life is connected to the span of one day. The narrator says that "Old age should burn and rave at close of day" (line 2). This means that old people ought to fight when it comes to the end of their lives. In this way, then, the author depicts a strong relationship between our lives and nature.

The speaker says that "Because [wise men's] words had forked no lightning they / Do not go gentle into that good night" (5-6). He compares the power of their words to the power of lightning via another metaphor, suggesting that they believe they've had no impact and so they refuse to die quietly.

In the third stanza, the speaker says that good men cry and he compares, via another metaphor, youth to a green bay in the line: "how bright / Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay" (7-8). These good men feel that they might have been able to do so much more good than they did in their youths and so they fight against death.  

In the fourth stanza, the speaker compares living fully to catching and singing "the sun in flight" (line 10). He says that even wild men do not die quietly because they feel they haven't lived as fully as they could have.

In the final stanza, the speaker uses a simile to compare the literal blind eyes of old people to "meteors" that blaze (line 13). When these "Grave men" realize that they could have been happier in life, they regret that they weren't more happy when they had the chance.

In every stanza, there is a comparison that likens some aspect of human experience, especially our experience of death, to some aspect of nature. And these occur in addition to the central metaphor comparing death to night. Taken together, these comparisons, which are key to understanding the work, link our life experience to nature.

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Almost every stanza of Dylan Thomas's "Do not go gentle into that good night" invokes some aspect of the natural world. The "frail deeds" of good men "might have danced in a green bay" (7-8), "wild men" catch "the sun in flight" (10), and, above all, we are encouraged to "rage against the dying of the light" at multiple points in the poem. In many ways, these connections illustrate the fact that the actions of humans are part of a network of causes and effects in the natural world; like the ebbing and flowing sea, or the rising and setting sun, the rhythms of human society follow a pattern. This shows that we are not exceptional, but are rather merely players in a vast network of interconnected elements. This idea is especially important in Thomas' invocation of the "dying of the light," and his instructions to rage against it. Rather than meekly accepting the natural order in which we exist, here exemplified by the setting sun, he tells us to resist this order, to assert ourselves against the rhythms of nature. This act is one of defiance, and though it cannot change the fact that, like the rest of nature's beings, humans must die, it does show Thomas' interest in asserting the primacy of the human spirit despite the fact that we are, in many sense, chained to the rules of nature.  

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