Do Not Go Gentle Into That Night
In “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” Dylan Thomas pleads, demands, and tries to persuade his father to keep on living, to fight death. ... The last word in the first line rhymes with the last word in the last line, and the last line is either “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” and “Do not go gentle into that good night.” “Do not go gently into that good night” is Thomas’s demand; the “good night” refers to the valediction said in the night, before one goes to sleep, symbolized as death. ... “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” begins Thomas’s justification for his father’s fight against death.