"Do not Go Gentle into that Good Night"

Unlike many other poems that talk about the subject of death, this poem has a tone of resistance and defiance toward death. Many authors or speakers take an attitude of acceptance toward death, but this speaker has a completely different idea. Aging and death are seen in a very negative way in this poem. The tone of resistance is made clear by the repetition of two phrases throughout the entire poem. By repeating the message of raging against death and not going gently into the night, the author encourages people to fight death instead of give up and accept it. The structure, known as a villanelle, also plays a vital role in conveying the message and attitude of the speaker. In addition to the theme of approaching death, the poem is also about how different people live their lives. The auhor compares "wild men" to "good men" to "grave men" in the piece. The poem becomes personal to the speaker, because the father of the narrator is directly adressed in the final stanza. This made me think that maybe the speaker's father is close to death, and the speaker wants his father to put up a good fight before dying. Maybe the speaker feels so strongly about death because he is placed in a situation in which he and his family could possibly be greatly impacted by death as it approaches his father.