Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

“Do not go gentle into that good night” employs light imagery as a symbol of life and the imagery of darkness as a symbol of death. Thomas refers to fire and light with words like “burn” (Line 2), “lightning” (Line 5), “bright” (Line 7), “sun” (Line 10), and “meteors” (Line 14). These references connect the appearance of light with the fullness of life, life energy, and a sense of vitality amongst the individuals who are described with such words. Many of these images fade, just as life is extinguished in the groups of individuals about whom Thomas writes the poem.

The phrase “that good night” (Line 1), which is repeated several times throughout the poem, symbolizes the dark imagery that is typical of literary suggestions of death. Several other references to darkness appear, such as “close of day” (Line 2), “the dying of the light” (Line 3), and “dark” (Line 4). The absence of light is also notable in the imagery of blindness that appears later in the poem.

The juxtaposition of light and dark imagery throughout the poem emphasizes the extreme contrast that exists between the living and the dead. When compared to the absence of movement and energy that characterizes death, the vitality of life and the energetic quality of a living being are all the more powerful. The stillness of death is more rigid when it is compared to the pulsing quality of living beings, an observation that Thomas himself may have made while sitting with his father at his father’s deathbed.

In the middle four stanzas of “Do not go gentle into that good night,” the speaker refers to men grouped by generalized descriptors. The second stanza describes “wise men” (Line 4), while the third addresses the experience of “Good men” (Line 7). The speaker continues to discuss “Wild men” (Line 10) in the fourth stanza, and “Grave men” (Line 13) are the subject of the fifth stanza. These broad groupings represent a spectrum of approaches to life that seemingly make life worth living, yet all of them fall short when death inevitably becomes near.

The motif of these groups of individuals suggests that a finite number of attitudes towards life exist and that none of them are truly satisfactory in the grand scheme of life experience. A life worth living is impossible to define, just as death is impossible to understand. The realizations about life and death that descend on all of the men as death approaches involve the futility of their choices, behaviors, and actions, no matter the motivations for life identified and linked with each group of individuals. Wise men alone understand that “dark is right” (Line 4), or, that death is a foregone conclusion that must be met with acceptance and grace.