Villanelles- Do not go gentle into that good night

Out of these three poems, Do not go gently into that good night seems to fit the profile of a Villanelle the best. The poem follows the villanelle structure just as it is explained: Two lines that are both repeated four times each ("Rage, rage against the dying of the light" and "Do not go gentle into that good night"), five stanzas of three lines followed by a quatrain, and an ABA rhyme scheme. This poem exemplifies these aspects of the villanelle perfect and does not stray from the basic structures like the other two poems slightly do. In this poem, Dylan Thomas describes four types of men and how they react when they come to the realization that it is their time to die. "Wise men" know that their time has come but wish they had caused more controversy or spread their wisdom more during life. The "good men" wish they could do more good deeds. The "wild men" reflect on how they might have lived life too fast and have come to that realization too late. "Grave men", though they are near death, are still able to see joy in life and thus want to go on living. In the quatrain at the end of the poem, Thomas addresses his father and tells him "Do not go gentle into that good night; Rage, rage against the dying of the light". Thomas is almost selfishly asking his father to hold onto life so that he will not lose him. As the excerpt said that villanelles traditionally deal with some sort of loss, this villanelle deals with the ordeal of death in general,and then, more specifically, the death of Thomas' father.

This picture makes me think of the use of "light" and "night" in the poem to represent life and death. A candle light slowly fading in the night as the wick burns out seems to represent going gently into the night, just what the author is saying to avoid.