Preview

Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Figurative Language

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
541 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Figurative Language
Yeats’ “The Second Coming” and Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” are two contrasting poems with passionate tones. Yeats’ poem describes a new time that will bring disorder to the world. He explains his ideas in a negative tone that presents a frightening mood. On the other hand, Thomas’ poem is about the struggle against death. He urgently begs his father to battle against death, creating a sad mood. In each poem, figurative language, the theme, and the mood are used to create the authors tone.
To begin with, “The Second Coming” and “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” have powerful moods that convey the authors tone. Yeats’ poem has descriptive words that make the reader feel frightened. His negative tone and threatening words give the reader a sense of fear. By having a frightening mood, this helps to create his pessimistic tone. In contrast, “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” has a depressing mood. As Thomas speaks about death, the readers feel sympathetic because of his desperation. His tone is very urgent and gives the poem a sorrowful mood. Readers are able to understand his desperate wishes through the mood of the story. In both poems, the mood created by the author helps form the tone.
…show more content…
For example, Thomas uses repetition throughout “Do Not Go Gentle into the Good Night”. He repeatedly says, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” He is using metaphorical language to express his wishes for his father to fight against death. As he repeats himself, readers can understand his tone of desperation. Similarly, Yeats uses figurative language such as imagery and to express his ideas: “The darkness drops again; but now I know that twenty centuries of stony sleep.” Darkness appeals to sight and adds a negative tone to the poem. By using figurative language, the readers are able to sense the tone of the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    What goes through your mind when you read a poem? What is the message that the author implements into their writing? Well, the two prominent poems that need further explanations towards these questions are “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas and “Love is not all” by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The positions of both authors are very different within their poems from each other though they both spread a good moral towards the reader. In “Do not go gentle into that good night”, Dylan Thomas’ stance is to fight against death when it comes at your doorstep. In “Love is not all”, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s stance is to realize that love is not always happy thoughts, but you should still remember those you’ve loved in the past. Knowing…

    • 942 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Figurative language allows readers to better understand the message that the author is trying to say. Personification allows writers to easily reveal what they are trying to say when descriptions fail them. By including personification, the author can clearly communicate how he felt at a specific time. As a reader, personification allows us to easier relate to the idea or feeling the author is conveying. Wiesel uses personification on page thirty nine, when he says “Remorse began to gnaw at me.” Remorse cannot eat away at a person, but it allows the reader to understand how guilty Elie felt when he did not stand up for his father. A second example of figurative language used in Night is foreshadowing. Foreshadowing allows the author to keep…

    • 353 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    William Yeats’ poem The Second Coming reveals a great deal about the evils of war, and the corruption of the human mind. Although the poems true meaning disguises…

    • 474 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Thomas’s uses the perspective of a son watching his father go towards death to express anguish of the experience. In The son urges his father repeatedly through the poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night” (Thomas 1) and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (Thomas 3). These two lines are repeated and alternate thought Thomas’s poem and continue to urge the father to fight against his death. This external perspective of watching someone creeping towards death and the differing experiences of men who a dying are ways that the son pleads for his father to fight for more life. The son goes through a list of wise, good, wild, and grave men who each experience death differently. The…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    One of Dylan Thomas’ most famous poems, Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night, is an emotional and passionate poem. It is a poem that is intended to cause fury. He is able communicate the theme of the poem by the use of figurative languages, such as metaphors and personification. Another effective way of writing Dylan uses is repetition. He uses repetition to emphasize words that are important in his writing and to express his theme. Using figurative languages such as symbols and metaphors and combining it with musical devices like repetition, allows Dylan convey the theme of the poem, which is to stir up anger and rage to fight against mortality.…

    • 738 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Poetic styles can give an independence to the writer and allow he or she to create somewhat of a dramatic effect and tie seemingly loose ends of a poem. The poem “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas poetic form is a villanelle meaning it has 19 lines which is divided in five-three lines and a 6th stanza with 4 lines. The Villanelle form in the poem creates persistent repetition of the poets message and makes it easy to follow along. At the end of each lines in the poem, metaphor of death keeps getting repeated. Through this poem, the poet is pleading to his dad to not just let death take him that easy and that he needs to struggle and fight with it.…

    • 288 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Both Keats and Longfellow were poets during the Romantic period. The two compose poems in which they reflect on their inability to live up to their creative potential and the idea that death could intervene at any moment. Longfellow is disappointed in his failures and sees comfort in the past rather than an uncertain future. Moreover, Keats fears he won’t accomplish all that he wants, but sees possibility and realizes his grievous goals won’t be important after death. While Longfellow’s tone is fearful, Keats’ is appreciative and hopeful about what life has to offer right now. In both poems, the poets use the literary devices parallelism and symbolism, to depict their particular situation in their own lives, while also using diction with characteristics of romantic poetry, reflecting their time period.…

    • 692 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    We can be more specific and see what the poet and writer exactly talk about. It is better to focus on the poem first as it was written before the novel. In his poem William butler Yeats is shocked by the events which were happening during the First World War. "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned…", he tries to picture the dark ages of the war and the nasty events which were happening by using some metaphors and similes such as "a shape with lion body and the head of man" or "shadows of the indignant desert birds" Therefore, he manage to transmit the terrifying atmosphere of his time to the reader. He can not stand this state of fairs so he thinks that it is the end and he hopes that it is time for the second coming of Christ.…

    • 512 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    If you've ever watched the movie "Interstellar" then you've heard these words before "do not go gentle into that good night”. “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas is a poem that examines death and the inevitable demise that comes with old age. Dylan Thomas seems to be convinced that it is not ethical or befitting for an accomplished or influential person to die softly in old age. The author of the poem knows that death is unavoidable, but believes that it should be fought every inch of the way. In this masterpiece, Dylan Thomas illustrates his purpose by using metaphors for death, and by incorporating the passing away of his father into the poem.…

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When writing poetry the way things are said and the words chosen help to bring an understanding to the general idea being presented. Thomas’s choice of “wise men” help to illustrate that he is talking about men who have reached old age (4-7). Thomas states that “dark is right,” which allows the reader to understand that these men are wise because they realize that death is their fate and they understand it is inevitable. When the author refers to death, he calls it a “good night” because he does not necessarily view it as a…

    • 671 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Fahrenheit 451 Themes

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In the poem he continually discusses that death is rage, a curse, etc. These inevitable fears are first introduced in the first stanza when he states, “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.” This first stanza opens with saying one should not give into death, and when it comes, it should come with a full life. These ideas are featured once again in the last stanza. The author reveals the true purpose about the poem in this stanza, stating, “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 this stanza he is saying that he believes his father should fight, and that he does not care what his father has to do to fight. Giving up the fight is like being a lawn mower in a field of gardeners, in the end those who fight have a greater…

    • 667 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Family, a tremendous importance to individuals across the world. Family, sometimes the only thing that individuals know and love and have brought people together for generations. Family for me has always been the MOST valuable thing, in the end, who else is going to always be by my side? No one other than family. Since my morals are so family based, a poem that intrigued me mainly due to the popularity of it and my close relationship with my father is, Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas. Dylan Thomas was a 20th century poet whom unlike most poets of his time, chose to stay away from writing about favored topics such as social issues. Instead, he chose to write poetry that reflected the Romantic era and heart-felt relationships. Written in 1951 during Thomas’s father’s final days due to an illness, “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” illuminates the importance of fighting until the end and resisting “going into the light” through his use of symbolism, form, figures of…

    • 668 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Easter 1916

    • 586 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Yeats emphasizes the independence the Irish rebellion brought, while making the reader feel sympathy towards the rebels who lost their lives for the cause. Three of the four stanzas in “Easter 1916” end with “A terrible beauty is born.” Yeats creates an oxymoron to remind the reader that while the rebellion brought social rebirth to the people of Ireland, many lives were tragically lost in achieving independence from the British. By reminding the reader that the rebellion was a gain that also brought loss, Yeats powerfully makes the audience feel torn between believing that the confrontation between the Irish and the British was a good idea and that it was not.…

    • 586 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” was written by a concerning son begging his father to battle for his life. Dylan Thomas did not want his father to surrender the fight against death. The author states at the end of his poem how he wanted his father to live and defeat death with rage. “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” (Thomas lines 16-18). Clearly, the author wants his father to stay strong, put his armor on, and not give up the fight to stay alive.…

    • 490 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    the second coming

    • 197 Words
    • 1 Page

    The Second Coming William Butler Yeats TURNING and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.…

    • 197 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays