What literary devices are used in "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"?

"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night" is a villanelle, a verse form consisting of five three-line stanzas followed by a four-line stanza. The main feature of a villanelle is repetition according to a set scheme: The first line of the first stanza is repeated as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas. The last line of the first stanza is then repeated as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas. This creates a pleasing sense of rhythm and makes it easy to remember the two most important lines of the poem, which are repeated together in the final two lines.

Within this form, Thomas also uses apostrophe. In apostrophe, the poem's speaker directly addresses an absent person or object. In this case, the speaker is talking directly to his father. This adds to the emotional force of the words. Thomas uses personification, which is when objects, concepts, or animals are given human characteristics, when he refers to "frail deeds" dancing as if they are human. Thomas employs alliteration in phrases such as "blind eyes could blaze" and "deeds might have danced," and he employs assonance in such lines as "words had forked."

Thomas also uses imagery throughout the poem in words such as "lightning," "light," "sun," "blaze," and "meteor" to paint a visual picture of the way old men should fight back against death. He employs a simile when he compares old men's blind eyes to "meteors."

What are some examples of literary devices in "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas?

Consonance, as the name implies, is an effect where consonant sounds are repeated. While alliteration—the repetition of the same consonant at the start of a word—is a type of consonance, consonance also includes the repetition of internal consonant sounds. It should not be confused with assonance, which is the repetition of vowel sounds. In this poem, we can see consonance in the repetition of s in the line "Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears," and also on t in the repeated line, "Do not go gentle into that good night." There are also multiple incidences of alliteration ("rage, rage," "sang the sun in flight," "blind eyes could blaze").

Allusion is when a writer uses an expression which recalls another work, a piece of Classical myth, or similar. There isn't an overt allusion in this poem, but the reference to "my father there on that sad height" is sometimes interpreted as a description of God looking into "the valley of the shadow of death," an allusion to Psalm 23.

Hyperbole is a Greek term meaning exaggeration or overemphasis. We can see hyperbole throughout this poem in the speaker's insistence that we should "burn and rave at close of day" and "rage against the dying of the light." The speaker encourages a seemingly immoderate reaction to what is really a natural process.

Onomatopoeia is a term referring to words whose sound-shapes seem to echo the actual sounds they are describing, like "splash" or "tick-tock." In this poem, we can see an example of this in the word "blaze," which seems to echo the sound of a meteor erupting with bright heat.

Personification is found in this poem in the reference to "frail deeds" which "might have danced in a green bay." We also see synecdoche in the suggestion that "old age should burn and rave at close of day," the "old age" here representing the whole person, or group of people, in old age. Likewise, synecdoche is found in the phrase "blind eyes could blaze."