Stylistic Analysis of a Poem Stylistics 551 Lecture 29

The metaphor of night as death continues here, with death figured as the "dark." The speaker admits that sensible, smart people realize death – traveling into "the dark" – is inevitable and appropriate. After all, we're all going to die, and it's a totally natural process. But even though clever people know they're going to die, they don't simply accept it. They don't take the news lying down. Why not? The speaker tells us that it's because "their words had forked no lightning" (line 5). This image is puzzling and open to several interpretations.

the "words" represent the actions, the speech, or maybe the artistic creation of intelligent people. These words don't fork lightning, which means they don't split and divert the massive electrical shock of the lightning bolt, which draws it toward themselves like a lightning rod instead. Even though the "wise men" have put everything they can into their "words," those words weren't attractive enough to make the lightning split.

Basically, they haven't really made much of a mark on the world. The bright electric current of the lightning bolt adds a new twist to the light/dark and day/night metaphors, suggesting that really living life is more like getting zapped by an electric shock than like feeling the gentle radiation of the sun. This stanza also begins to conflate – or collapse together – people in general, such as the person the speaker is addressing with poets and artists like the speaker himself.

As the poem continues, we'll see more and more connections between great men and great artists. These connections imply that artistic expression is a more concentrated version of life in a broader sense. You know, the way a can of lemonade concentrate tastes way more lemon-y than the lemonade itself once you add water.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Once again, the best way to understand how all these poetic images work together is to untangle Thomas's sentences, which are all twisted up so that they fit the meter and form of the villanelle. The basic parts of this sentence are the subject, "Good men" (line 7), and the verb, "Rage" (line9). In the speaker's opinion, true goodness consists of fighting the inevitability of death with all your might: "Good men […] Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Next, Thomas adds an image of the ocean waves; the most recent generation of good men, the "last wave by" (line 7), are about to crash against the shore, or die. As they approach death, these men shout out how great their actions could've been if they'd been allowed to live longer. Or, to use the metaphor in the poem, as their wave crashes against the rocks, the men shout how beautifully that wave could have danced in the bay if it could've stayed out at sea instead of rolling onto the beach.

So this generation is like a wave, death is like the breaking of the wave on the shore, the sea is like life, and the dancing waters in the ocean are like beautiful actions. The bay is "green" because the sea is really brimming with life – plants, seaweed, algae, you name it. In this image, being out at sea is like life and coming back to the barren shore is death –the opposite of the metaphor you might expect, in which drifting out to sea would be like death.

Notice that Thomas describes the good men's potential future actions – the things they won't be able to do because they have to die – as "frail deeds." It's not clear whether the men or the actions are weakened by age; perhaps both.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight, And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, Do not go gentle into that good night. The speaker describes another kind of men – those who don't allow themselves to fade quietly away into death, "Wild men" (line 10). What sort of men are we talking about? The kind who captured the world around them in their imagination and celebrated it – "who caught and sang the sun in flight" (line 11) – only to discover that the world they celebrated was slowly dissolving around them as comrades age and die. Here the sun represents the beauty that exists in the mortal world, and its "flight" across the sky represents the lifespan of people living in this world.

"Flight" also suggests that it moves rapidly – our lives are just the blink of an eye. So just when you think you're partying to celebrate birth and life, symbolized by the sunrise, you find out that you're actually mourning death, symbolized by the sunset.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light. The speaker describes the way that "Grave men" fight their impending death. Notice the pun on "grave," which could either mean that the men are very serious, or that they are dying.

These serious dying guys realize that, even though they are weak and losing their faculty of sight, they can still use what strength they have to rage against death. So, even though their eyes are going blind, these men can "see," metaphorically speaking, with an overwhelming certainty or "blinding sight," that they still have a lot of power over the way they die, even if not the timing. Instead of getting snuffed like candles, they can "blaze like meteors" (line 14). They're planning to go out with a bang.

And you, my father, there on the sad height, 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. In the last lines of the poem, the speaker turns to addressing his father. His father is on the verge of death, which the speaker describes as a "sad height." We think this is probably an allusion to looking down into the Biblical valley of death; the metaphorical mountain where the father stands is the edge of the mortal world.

The speaker begs his father to cry passionately, which will be both a blessing and a curse. After all, the father's death is heartbreaking. But if he battles against the odds, it might also be heroic. The speaker ends with the two lines that are repeated throughout the poem, asking or instructing his father not to submit to death – instead, he should rant and rave and fight it every step of the way.