Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” is one of my favorite poems. I love how Thomas repeated the lines “Do not go gentle into that good good night,” and “Rage, rage, against the dying of the light” throughout the poem. Moreover, I like the themes of the poem, one of which, I believe, is about taking advantage of opportunities to do good in the world. We may be on the world for our entire life, but we don’t necessarily “live” for all that time. Unless we actually take actions that affect others and leave an impact, we are simply existing as an observer of the world for a brief time.
If we want to live instead of merely existing, we need to create something we are proud of, we need to protect what we love, and we need to influence other people’s lives, so they can do the same.
In the fifth stanza, Thomas says “Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight/Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,” contrasting the weakness of a man’s vision near death, to the great impact of their actions, others see after their death. For example, Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. was a Filipino senator who resisted the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, Sr. Once Marcos seized control of the government on September 21, 1972, by declaring martial law, he suspended constitutional rights, disbanded the legislature, and imprisoned opponents, like Aquino, who later was allowed to leave to the United States. Though Aquino was eventually murdered as soon as he returned to the Philippines, his actions inspired others to continue doing something about Marcos’s actions, ultimately ousting him in the EDSA Revolution of 1986. Yet, now people around the world are succumbing to the “gentle night” of inaction as politicians like Viktor Orban of Hungary and Aleksandar Vučić, President of Serbia, suppress their constituents’ actions to try to improve their country through Orban’s control of information through the withdrawal of media license and the fining of journalists without good cause, allocation of more resources to their party, and rigging of elections,” (Civil Rights Defenders) and Vučić’s use of the police to suppress protest, as stated in Amnesty International.
As he repeats the line, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light,” Thomas urges us to not give up with any of our pursuits, especially the difficult but meaningful actions that can positively impact hundreds or even thousands of others. Moreover, we need to put in the effort to resist “the dying of the light,” or we will say “good night” to our friends, our communities, and everything else we care about. We will regret this lost opportunity as we wake up in a land we don’t recognize, surrounded by people we don’t remember.
