Comparative analysis of literary works sharing common themes

Thomas/Updike Compare/Contrast

The Fight for Life in Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night" and John Updike's "Dog's Death"

Death has proven to be an inspiration for many poets and has been written about throughout history. These poets look at death from differing perspectives and many have argued that it should be fought against while others are more submissive to the concept. In "Do not go gentle into that good night," written by Dylan Thomas (1951), and "Dog's Death," by John Updike (1993), take a stance that accepting death is unnatural and that a person or any living being should fight until the end. In "Do not go gentle into that good night," Thomas argues that death is something that should be fought against and that a person should only succumb to their end when he or she is ready. On the other hand, in "Dog's Death," Updike demonstrates that it is unnatural to give up and that living beings should fight until the very last. Dylan Thomas and John Updike have similar attitudes toward death, yet their respective poems depict the fight against death from different perspectives.

Dylan Thomas was born on October 27, 1914 in Wales. Thomas was greatly influenced by his father, an English literature professor, who not only helped to imbue the poet with a love of literature, but also became the inspiration for "Do not go gentle into that good night" (Dylan Thomas, n.d.). Thomas found success as a poet in his lifetime and was even described as "flamboyantly theatrical, a heavy drinker, engaged in roaring disputes in public, and read his work aloud with tremendous depth of feeling and a singing Welsh lilt" (Dylan Thomas, n.d.). Tragically, Thomas would not live past 40, something that his father had long prophesized, and in fact, passed away on November 9, 1953 (Dylan Thomas: "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," 2008).

On the other hand, John Updike was born on March 18, 1932 in Shillington, Pennsylvania (John Updike, n.d.). Like Thomas, Updike was influenced by his parents growing up as his mother was a writer and encouraged him to write (John Updike, 2009). Updike grew to have a highly prestigious career as a writer and won several prominent awards including two Pulitzer Prizes, the National Book Award, the American Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Arts Club Medal of Honor (John Updike, n.d.). Throughout his literary career, Updike wrote more than fifty novels and published multiple short story volumes and multiple volumes of his collected poems (John Updike, n.d.). Updike passed away on January 27, 2009.

"Do not go gentle into that good night" is full of rebellious undertones, which help to establish the poem's tone and theme. In the poem, Thomas attempts to convince his father to fight against death (Dylan Thomas: "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night," 2008). In "Do not go gentle into that good night," Thomas maintains, "old age should burn and rave at close of day" and that his father should not give into death so easily (Thomas, 1959, line 2). Thomas reasons that everyone should fight against death irrespective of who they are and what they have or have not accomplished in their lives. Because Thomas is making a supplication to his father, he focuses his attention on other men whom refuse to give in to death and instead choose to fight to live. Thomas describes "wise men" whom "at their end know dark is right" and how they fight to live even though they may realize that it is illogical for them to try and avoid the inevitable yet "do not go gentle into that good night" (Thomas, 1951, lines 4 & 6). Thomas then proceeds to describe other men that have rebelled against death and "rage against the dying of the light" (Thomas, 1951, line 3). These men include "[g]ood men…crying how bright/Their frail deeds might have danced in the bay;" "[w]ild men who caught and sang the sun in flight/And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way;" and "[g]rave men, near death, who see with blinding sight/Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay" (Thomas, 1951, lines 7-8 & 10-11 & 13-14). Finally, Thomas addresses his father as a person that is worthy to be compared to these different types of men and argues that he too should "rage against the dying of the light" (Thomas, 1951, line 18).

"Do not go gentle into that good night" highlights Thomas' fears concerning death and is coupled with his fear of losing his father. Through his descriptions of the men that fought against death it is evident that he fears his father will soon lose his battle against "the dying of the light" (Thomas, 1951, line 19). In the poem, Thomas (1951) pleas with his father so that he can "curse" and "bless" him with his "fierce tears" (line 17). A paradox arises through Thomas' juxtaposition of the terms "curse" and "bless." Through this paradox, Thomas' use of the term "curse" may be referencing the present pain that his father is in and the future pain Thomas himself will feel once his father passes away. The use of the term "bless" may reference an extended period of time that Thomas will be afforded with his father if his father fights against death while also referencing the peace that his father will finally be able to attain once we passes away. It can be argued that there is a level of jealousy towards death that Thomas is experiencing; Thomas urges his father to live, which would only prolong his suffering, in an attempt to stave off the inevitable and the endless. Thomas' inability to cope with the fact that his father is dying and accept that his father has not necessarily given up, but rather accepted that it is his time to die, may indicate that Thomas was unprepared to deal with his father's death at a personal, psychological, and emotional level.

The influence that Thomas' father had on the poet can be seen in the structure and content of the poem. For instance, Thomas wrote "Do not go gentle into that good night" as a villanelle, which is a poem where only two sounds are rhymed such as night and light and day and they. A villanelle is also made up of nineteen lines where the first and third lines rhyme with an alternation of the third line in each of the subsequent stanzas; a villanelle ends with a closing couplet. The villanelle is a unique poetic structure that was inspired by French poetic structure and began to be used in English poetry during the 19th Century (Poetic Form: Villanelle, n.d.). Additionally, it can be surmised that his father's literary background and the impact that it had on Thomas heavily inspired the subject matter and style of the poem with John Donne being a poet that clearly influenced Thomas. Parallels between Donne and Thomas' poetry can be seen through the comparison of "Do not go gentle into that good night" (1951) and "A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning" (1633). Like "Do not go gentle into that good night," "A Valediction: Forbidden Mourning" takes a look at how people have a desire to hold on to their friends and family at their last moments. Much like "Do not got gentle into that good night," Donne writes "As virtuous men pass mildly away,/And whisper their souls to go,/Whilst some of their sad friends do say/The breath goes no, and some say, No" (Donne, 1633, lines 1-4). Unlike Thomas' poem, which places the focus on his personal desires, Donne focuses on the reactions and wants of those that surround a dying person and appears to remove himself from the situation. Additionally, the overarching tone of rebellion against death that is depicted in "Do not go gentle into that good night" is evident in Donne's Holy Sonnets, specifically "Death be not proud" (1633). Thomas' belief that death is something that can be conquered can be seen in this sonnet. In "Death be not proud" (1633), Donne states that Death, personified, is a "slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men" and that it has no will of its own but must bend to the demands of others (line 9). Like Donne, Thomas maintains that death can be controlled and that an individual has the power to say when and where they are going to submit to their end. Instead of encouraging his father to accept death as a natural phenomenon, Thomas urges his father to attempt to conquer and defy death. Thomas argues that a person should fight for what they want in life, including the ability to live longer, not because they have to, but rather because an individual is overcome with a desire to do so.

Similarly, John Updike explores a similar theme of rebellion against death in "Dog's Death" (1993). In the poem, an unnamed narrator recollects how a puppy his family once owned survived insurmountable odds and continued to fight to live until the puppy could no longer do so and died. The puppy attempted to defy death, not because the puppy had the power to reason and rationalize that it was something that she could do, but rather the puppy attempted to defy death because it was natural and instinctual. The narrator contends that the puppy began to fight for its life at a very early age and that "[s]he must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car" (Updike, 1993, line 1). The narrator believes that the puppy was abused or neglected early in its life and that the effects of this abuse may not have been physically evident until it was too late. The narrator comments that the family "thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction" and were shocked when "[t]he autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver" (Updike, 1993, line 6-7).

The narrator contends that the puppy may have been "[t]oo young to know much, she was beginning to learn/To use the newspapers spread out on the kitchen floor,/And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog!/Good dog!" (Updike, 1993, lines 2-5). The puppy's demeanor led the family to believe that she was in good health and therefore they "teased her with play" not knowing that while they did that "blood was filling her skin/And her heart was learning to lie down forever" (Updike, 1993, lines 8-9). Because the puppy instinctually hid its pain from the family, "Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed/And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed" only to have the family find "her twisted and limp but still alive" (Updike, 1993, line 10-12). This instinct to hide when injured or in pain stems from an inherent evolutionary instinct "to act like nothing is wrong even when something most definitely is…[Dogs] suppress many of the more obvious signals of pain and injury to protect themselves and their social standing in their pack" (Coren, 2011). The family's subsequent reaction to take her to the vet immediately highlights that the puppy was not the only living being in the poem that believed that life should be fought for at any cost. Unfortunately, the narrator states, "In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she//Tried to bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur/And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears./Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,/Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared" (Updike, 1993, lines 13-17).

Regardless of the trauma that the puppy sustained, it did not affect her natural instinct to try and survive as the family witnesses that the puppy "[d]rawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame/Of diarrhea and had dragged across the floor/To a newspaper carelessly left there" (Updike, 1993, lines 19-21). This final attempt at normalcy demonstrates that the puppy tried fight the inevitable but was not able to win her battle against death. Like the various men in Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night" (1951), the puppy in "Dog's Death" raged "against the dying of the light" (line 18) and was unwilling to succumb to death without putting up a fight. The puppy learned at a very young age that the only way to survive was to fight to live; this lesson was not only learned through the abuse and neglect that the puppy had undergone, but it was also instinctual. Additionally, like Thomas' poem, the narrator has a close personal connection with the subject of the poem and was directly affected by the death of his family's puppy; moreover, by referencing children and mentioning the narrator's wife, Updike indicates that the death of the puppy had an immediate impact on the entire family.

The structure of "Dog's Death" helps to make the poem more impactful on the reader. The poem is comprised of five stanzas each consisting of four lines; there is little repetition, save for the first stanza in which the phrase "Good dog!" is repeated. The emphasis on this phrase helps to further establish the narrator and his family's view of the dog. By indicating that they thought she was a "good dog" in addition to stating that the puppy would have been "surrounded by love that would have upheld her" Updike is able to demonstrate that the family cherished the puppy (Updike, 1993, line 16). The rhyme scheme is not as prominent in the first stanza, however through the analysis of subsequent stanzas it becomes evident that there is some sort of rhyming structure being used. For example, it can be argued that the second stanza and third stanza follow an ABAB CCDD pattern, which is then again repeated in the fourth and fifth stanzas. Additionally, the poem is written in the past tense and the action in the poem is depicted through a memory flashback, which helps to establish that the narrator recalls the event with great sorrow.