"Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night"

I agree with our class discussion about Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" where we talked about the overall message that this poem displays. "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" (Thomas. l. 3), to me, represents the idea that no man should die without a fight. Thomas's second line, "Old age should burn and rave at close of day" also seems to represent the same idea, but enforces the fact that elders should make the most of every day they have because they don't know when it will be their last.

Some things that we didn't discuss in class that I found interesting throughout this poem are the descriptions used to characterized the different men. Words like good, grave, wild, and wise are all used and it seems that this gives the effect that the poem reaches out to ALL men and not just one type. The speaker emphasizes these descriptive words by placing them at the very beginning of each stanza, excluding the first and the last. Thomas's third line again, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light", is repeated exactly four times, the same number of descriptive words used. I think that is meant to direct the same "fight for every breath" message towards each type of man.