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Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night Essay

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In the poems “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas and “After a Time” by Catherine Davis they use diction or word choice to help explain their view on a given topic, in this case it is death. Dylan Thomas uses a lighter or more neutral tone to express his view on the experience when faced with death. In lines 1-3 he says “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” (Dylan 1-3).
Dylan uses words like rave and gentle to express his view point in a more neutral diction rather than aggressive like Catherine. In Catherine Davis’s villanelle she uses darker words along with more negative words choices. “After time all losses are the same./One …show more content…
Dylan’s theme is basically your life flashing before your eyes. “Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright/ Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay.” (Do not go gentle… lines 7,8).These excerpts from the villanelle go along with the theme as a result of the man thinking about his deeds and hoping he made a impact with them as he is dying. Dylan’s poem of making the most of your time is almost a polar opposite of Catherine’s that is a basic response to Do not go gentle. In Catherine’s poem her theme is that you can’t beat death and no matter what you do in your life you will lose it all. “No wit, no luck can beat a losing game;/ Good fortune is a reassuring ruse:/ And we go stripped at last the way we came.” (After time line 7-9). I back up my point with this stanza because it is a great summary of this villanelle. You see that you can’t beat death and that good luck can trick you into changing your mind but in the ends you leave like you came. So even though these two villanelles have different views I believe that they each have a very good messages that we can learn

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