Death, Fight it or welcome it?
As I read the poem “Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night” by Dylan Thomas, I decided to look into the history of the poem. I found out that this poem was written during the time the poet father’s illness and death. This poem makes more sense to me now because of that fact. In the begging of the poem you have the lines not to go gentle into the light, he tells him to rage against the dying of the light. To me he is asking his father to fight for his life, rage to me is to a powerful emotion for a man in his death bed. As the poem continues, he is pushing him to not give up. Telling his father using wise men, good men, wild men, or grave men as examples to illustrate the same message, that no matter how they have lived their lives or what they feel at the end of it they should die fighting. The poem ends with the same line Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night. Anybody could relay to this poem, nobody would like to see a love one give up on life. Fight every single moment to stay alive, rage, rage against the dying of the light.
The next poem I read was a gentler look at death. “Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson, in this poem she describes death as kind and civil. The reader is taking for a ride with the poet and death. The journey beings with death kindly stopping for her, they both get into his carriage to take a trip to immortality. To me immortality is their destination but to get there her life ends. She describes it as a slow gentle drive; He knew no haste, along the way they pass by a school were children played at recess, a field of grains and the setting of the sun. To me the drive symbolizes her life. She progresses from childhood; the children in the school, maturity; the gazing grain and death; the setting sun. The ride stops at a house, maybe her grave. She welcomes death. The poem ends with ‘tis Centuries and yet feels shorter than a day, life is long but at the end it doesn’t feel long...