Although using such a constricted form as the villanelle might seem to soften the poet's rage and anger against the coming death of his elderly father, the repetitive nature of the poem's structure shows how singular and blinding the anger and fear of death can be, when it is about to come to a parent. Unlike Donne's theoretical, abstract sense that death comes to everyone, Thomas underlines how even wise, good, wild, and grave men alike, no matter what they thought about death before they were actually facing it, still 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." No one, Thomas suggests, really wants to die, no matter how much they might profess to believe in a world hereafter, nor how fully or godly a life they lived.
Thomas begs his father for rage, even though he knows it is rage against the inevitable. Religion and knowledge gives no comfort to Thomas. He does not believe that there is certainty that his father's...
Like Donne, Thomas initially sees death as bad, triumphant, and threatening -- compare the forces of Donne's scourges poison and disease with the terrors of old age in Thomas' poem. There is no ebbing away of death upon the waking of the soul in heaven in Thomas' vision. For Thomas, the only recourse one has to the triumph of death is futile rage, not the prospect of immortality. Only by articulating the injustice of the shortness of life, rather than concealing it with religious homilies, Thomas suggests, can the fearful person confronting death find any good in the experience.
Works Cited
Donne, John. "Death Be Not Proud." Classic Literature. About.com. 22 Mar 2008. http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/jdonne/bl-jdonne-death.htm
Thomas, Dylan. "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night." Dylan Thomas Page.
22 Mar 2008. http://www.bigeye.com/donotgo.htm
