"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night"

"Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light" (1-3).

"Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night," by Dylan Thomas, despite not being what I expected it to be about - thank you - shows a very clear pattern.  You see, Thomas uses the very distinct rhyme scheme of a Villanelle - I once wrote a Villanelle with Becca Quill entitled "Mice on Moon," which was turned into a feature length music video performed by Bryan Rainey, Abby Koop, and Margaret Blandford, but that is a story for another day.  Basically, the overall pattern is something like an ABA' ABA ABA' type of deal, with the last quatrain being something like an ABAA'.  Not only did this link the tercets, but it also emphasized the last stanza as that of importance.  This poem really gave meaning to your phrase, "The author was not just lazy with their word choice."  Before I get into what the four different... men? tercets were for, I decided to give a little shout out to the first tercet.  It not only served as a nice reiteration of the poem's title in case I had already forgotten - I hadn't - but it also told me what the "good night" is - death.

There were "men-y" tercets in this poem (that was a pun).  In fact, there were four distinct types of people in this poem - I do not believe that the speaker is literally talking about men, but rather using it as a way to say humanity.

Wise men know when they will die, but will not see that the contributions that they think they made were actually useless.

Good men always think that they could have done better with their life when they begin to see death.

Wild men just go with life as it goes, but as they see death, learn that they had did not do anything significant.

Grave men see death as almost an exciting term.  The speaker uses a simile to show this excitement.

Okay, another pattern is that wise men and wild men do not go gentle, while good men and grave men rage.  Can you say, "Those start with the same letter?"

P.S.  Margaret messed up when she was singing my song, but I have gotten over that!  Mrs. Sander might still have that video if you really wanted to see/hear it.