Dylan Thomas’s ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ has become one of the most widely-known and used funeral poems of modern times. Here, Jessica Lim reflects on the language of struggle, anger and fighting and how the metaphors we choose shape our experience of grief.
Dylan Thomas, 1951
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.
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.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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 repeating refrains from Dylan Thomas’s poem, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’, resound in cultural memory: ‘Do not go gentle into that Good night. Rage, rage, against the dying of the light’. The imperatives in the refrains seem to compel us, as readers, to fight against the inevitability of mortality: they seem to speak to a universal condition against which we must all fight. Such is the emotion invoked, for instance, in Christopher Nolan’s film Interstellar (2014), where Michael Caine recites the opening two tercets from the poem, skips the rest of the poem, and adds in the final line: ‘Rage, rage, against the dying of the light’, as the space shuttle Endeavour launches in a bid to ensure humanity’s survival.
In some ways, Thomas’s poem seems to invoke the metaphor that is commonly used when we in the twentieth-century talk about death and dying: it is a case of fighting, raging against the dying light; an act of battle, if you will. And there is something rather morbid about using a simplistic metaphor of battles to speak of dying: “She lost the battle to cancer” almost places blame on the person who had cancer and died. “She won the battle against cancer”, on the other hand, seems to imply that victory is possible, and implicitly casts doubt on those who did not ‘win’ this battle.
Yet, despite its refrains, Thomas’s poem is not a universal cry for everybody to fight against the inevitability of death. Instead, it is a deeply personal and desperate plea that may be felt by anyone who has seen a loved one dying: don’t go, don’t go yet, please, don’t leave me yet.
What is not often recognised is that Dylan Thomas’s famous invective against death is a specific type of poem: a villanelle, a type of poem that asks to be read in its entirety, rather than excerpted in bits and pieces. The key thing about a villanelle is the way its refrains work: the first and third lines in the first tercet (three-line stanza) become the refrains that wind through the poem. These lines alternate as the final line for the next four tercets; then there is a final quatrain, where they are placed side by side. The effect is one of accumulation and intensification.
At first, it does seem that Dylan Thomas is asking all of humanity to fight against death, to cling onto life. His tercets address everybody: the old, the wise, the good, the wild, and the grave, implying that there is some universal force to what he is saying. Yet the final address is not to humanity, but instead, to his own father: ‘there on the sad height.’ Suddenly, the force and desperation of Thomas’s lines reassert themselves with force: he is not simply raging against the human condition of mortality, but he is a grieving individual in pain, watching his father waste away before his eyes. ‘Curse, bless me now, with your fierce tears, I pray,’ he urges, suggesting that what he ultimately wants is a moment of human connection with his father. As the two refrains come together once more, with the speaker his father to ‘not go gentle into that good night / Rage, rage, against the dying of the light’, the message becomes more poignant and less proscriptive; more a personal plea for connection and despair in the face of death rather than a strident, if courageous, attempt to defy death.
‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ can, therefore, be read as a personal cry of grief and mourning, rather than a universal call to action. To not ‘go gentle into that good night’ can, therefore, be read as a plea to maintain connections to the end: ‘Curse, bless me now, with your fierce tears, I pray.’ For ultimately, the poem suggests, it is the way we value connections with our loved ones; it is the power with which we invest our relationships, which become the key means by which we can ‘Rage, rage, against the dying of the light.’
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Categories: Reflections