Do Not Go Gentle Dylan Thomas

Dr.
Ali Al-Haidari
Life
• Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, Wales on 27th October 1914.
• His father was an English teacher.
• His mother was a simple and religious woman.
• He has one sibling, Nancy Marles.
• In 1936, he met Caitlin Macnamara, a 22 year old dancer, who later became his
wife. They had got three kids.
• When Thomas’s father became old he went blind and very weak.
• His father became very ill and died in 1952.
• John Brinnin invited him to visit USA. He visited America several times.
• He began touring in America, and arrived in New York in 1953. He wasn’t very
well and was put into a coma on November 5th. He died four days later, still in a
coma.
• He died on November 9, 1953 in St Vincent’s Hospital, New York.
Education
• He enrolled at Swansea Grammar School in 1925.
• He was an undistinguished pupil.
• He left school at 16 and became a journalist at South Wales Daily Post.
• He inherited his intellectual and literary abilities from his father and his mood,
temperament and respect for his Celtic heritage from his mother.
His Career
• He worked as an actor, reviewer, reporter, scriptwriter and various other jobs.
• He is a poet.
• Many of his works appeared in print while he was still a teenager.
• Eighteen Poems (1934)
• Twenty Five Poems (1936)
• Deaths and Entrances (1946)
• Collected Poems (1952)
• Milk Wood (1953)
Themes and Style
• His poetry was “the record of” his “individual struggle from darkness toward
some measure of light…… To be stripped of darkness is to be clean”.
• According to him, his poems are written for love of man and in praise of god.
• Celebration of the divine purpose he saw in all human and natural process.
• The cycle of birth, and flowering and death, of love and of death.
• Recapture of a child’s innocent vision of the world.
• His early poems are relatively mysterious and complex in sense but simple and
obvious in pattern.
• They are deeply passionate and often show uncontrolled use of the magic
language.
• They are more controlled and more disciplined.
• Most of his images are drawn upon the human body, sex and The Old Testament.
• His verse is colorful and musical.
• His best poems have a combination of concentration and violence, of rhetoric and
suggestiveness that is most impressive.
• His later poems are simple in sense and complex in sounds.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day; 1- What is the title of the poem?
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 2- How many Stanzas are there?
3- What kind of stanzas are used?
Though wise men at their end know dark is right, 4- What is a three-line stanza called?
Because their words had forked no lightning they 5- What is a four-line stanza called?
Do not go gentle into that good night. 6- What is a 19-line poem called?
7- Can you divide Villanelle into some
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright parts?
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, 7- What are these parts?
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 8- Is there any kind of repetition used
in the poem?
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, 9- What is the rhyme scheme of the
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, poem?
Do not go gentle into that good night. 10- How many syllables are there in
each line?
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight 11- How many strong and week
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, syllables are there?
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 12- What is Iambic Pentameter?
13- Do you note any parallelism in the
And you, my father, there on the sad height, poem?
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
1- Who is the addressee?

2- What does “good night” stand for?
3- Do you think the addressee is young or old?
4- Are the words “burn and rave” associated with the young or old men?
5- What do “close of the day” and “dying of the light” stand for?
6- Why does the poet urge the addressee to fight against the death?
7- Find an example of :
 Apostrophe.
 Metaphor
 Assonance
 Alliteration
 Symbol
 Personification
 Contrast
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
1- What is the purpose of using the word “though”?

2- Who are the wise men?
3- Why do they fight against death? WISE MEN
4- What does “dark” stand for?
5- What are “words” compared to?
6- What is “lightning” compared to?
7- Find an example of :
 Metaphor
 Assonance
 Alliteration
 Symbol
 Enjambment
 Consonance
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
1- Who are the good men?

2- What does “the last wave” refer to?
3- How many images are used in this phrase? GOOD MEN
4- What might have danced?
5- Have the good men accomplished what they wished to in life?
6- Does “crying” refer to speaking out or mourning and weeping ?
7- Find out an example of:
 Assonance
 Alliteration
 Personification
 Metaphor
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
1- Are the wild men different from the wise and good men?
2- Does the poet compare the sun to the cycle of life?
3- Does the “sun in flight” or the flight of the sun refer to setting?
Wild Men
4- Is sun part of the nature?
5- Can it be stopped?
6- Can death be stopped?
7- Did wild men waste much time?
8- How did they waste time?
9- Did they give up or resign to death?
10- Did they grieve for wasting time?
11- Did they think they will age and die?
11- Which image is joyous and powerful image of “caught and sang the sun” or “frail
deeds?
12- Find out an example of:
 Assonance
 Alliteration
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
1- Who are grave men?

2- Is there any figure of speech used? What is it?
3- What do the commas before and after death remind the reader?
4-Does “blaze like meteors” symbolize living life with full intensity?
F- Find out an example of:
 Assonance
 Alliteration
 Simile
 Oxymoron
 Contrast
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
1- Who is the addressee?

2- Is the poet extremely emotional?
3- What does “the sad height” symbolize?
4- Find out some examples of contrast.
Themes
• Theme of the old age.
• Theme of family (Familial bonds)
• Theme of Mortality and Death
• Theme of Wisdom and knowledge
• Theme of morality and transcendentalism
Theme of morality and transcendentalism.
• This line laments inevitability and necessity of
death, encouraging the old people to rise up
against their death and fate.
• The poet’s voice is arguing that the old people
should not consent to die immediately.
• He has linked being alive with passion and deep
emotions.
• Thomas’s “good men” and “wise men” resist
dying gently, because they could not achieve
what they might have achieved in their lives.
• Through the examples of different types of men,
the poet affirms the importance of being alive.
He believes that they should resist dying, if they
have not truly lived their lives.
.

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Dr.

1- Who is the addressee?

1- What is the purpose of using the word “though”?

1- Who are the good men?

1- Who are grave men?

1- Who is the addressee?

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