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Villanelle

Decent Essays

Death is inevitable; there is no going around it. “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas is a short villanelle poem written in 1951. The author was born in Swansea, Wales on October 27, 1914. Raised by his father, David John Thomas, which was an English master at the local grammar school, and became a big influence for Dylan Thomas. In the author’s poem the speaker addresses his father that if he must die then he should die with a fight. Nevertheless, the poem has a universal meaning in which humanity should not fear the unknown, but they should confront it.
At the beginning of the poem, the speaker argues to not go peaceful by using aggressive choice of words. He uses very calm words, followed by explosive ones that portray …show more content…

In the past, “Poets usually employed the villanelle for light or bucolic subjects, a kind of peacefully rural poem or “pastoral”. In the poem, the villanelle is used “in an uncommon form for the following reason: the poem does not preach calm, as might be expected, but rage, rage against death, that event often equated with Nature as an ultimate physical force” (Jhan). The ending of a villanelle is the most important because it is the central message of the poem. The speaker is persuading the readers the importance to not die without a word. With the last stanza “And you, my father, there on the sad height” (Thomas 16). The readers can conclude that the speaker is a son standing next to the deathbed of his father. Although deathbeds are low to the ground, the admiration of his father is a “sad height” because he looked up to him. Coincidently, the author was experiencing the same situation, making this poem very personal. One can only imagine these were his last thoughts as his father was dying. The readers can assume this poem was written in villanelle form to present it to his father. In the last stanza the speaker is imploring to his father to not go peacefully, but to be part of these men that refuse to die. In these last lines it finalizes the poem into a villanelle “Do not go gentle into that good night

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