When the father of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas was dying, it inspired Thomas to write one of his most famous works, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” The poem encourages Thomas’s father, and its readers, to fight for their lives when they approach death. The constant refrain in the poem is “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” meaning that one should defy death as much as possible. Similarly, in the opening stanza, Thomas states, “Old age should burn and rave at close of day” (2), continuing his theme of staying strong, as well as the metaphor of nighttime as death.
Thomas isn’t necessarily negative in his attitude toward death. He writes, “…wise men at their end know dark is right” (4). By this he means that smart people realize that death is the next logical step, and they acknowledge that it must happen. The rest of the poem offers examples of people who come to realize their misconceptions about life, and how this makes them reluctant to die. One of these instances is, “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” (13-15). “Grave,” or sad, men, that are dying are finally able to see with astounding clarity (“blinding sight”) how even people in unfortunate situations are capable of being happy. Even people with “blind eyes” can “be gay.” In these stanzas Thomas conveys the notion that our regrets in life tend to make us feel that we are not ready for death.
The last stanza of the poem is a direct plea from Thomas to his father: “And you, my father, there on the sad height,/Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears…” (16-17). Thomas refers to his father’s near-death state as “the sad height”; it is an achievement to have made it through to the end of our lives, but it is obviously bittersweet. Dylan Thomas’s appeals to his father to “curse” and “bless” him with his “fierce tears,” mean that although Thomas will be saddened by his father’s death, he wants his father to make him appreciate life. The tears have to be “fierce” in order to display how passionate his father was about life. The poet then entreats his father to follow the commands he’s been making throughout the piece: “…I pray,/Do not go gentle into that good night./Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (17-19). These instructions are made more powerful by the fact that Thomas includes the phrase, “I pray.” He is begging his father to do what he asks. Above all else, Thomas wants his father to fight for his life, rather than just give up, because Thomas sees the value in his father’s, and all, life.