Do NOT go Gentle into that Good Night

This was one of those poems i really didn't care for. however, after a class discussion or two, i understand it a bit more. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas is about a man with his father on his death bed. It's very heart wrenching and quite sad once the reader understands the poem. Written as a villanelle (19 lines), the repetition in the poem takes over and takes away from the beauty of this simple poem. The phrase "do not go gentle into that good night" is repeated every other stanza as well as the phrase "rage rage against the dying of the light.

The stanzas start out as memories and similes and metaphors but then transforms into a sad poem about a man watching his father slowly slip away; With depressing lines such as " Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray". Its sad reading about this man crumbling because of his father. Thomas seems to have written this from somewhat of a personal standpoint, which helps a lot when writing a poem or short story. It begs the question, did Thomas write this in the first person, or is this simply a made up poem?

The part I didn't enjoy were the repetitions actually! It doesn't seem to fit within the rhyme scheme, however it does end up completing and pulling the poem back to it's original thought. I thought the two repeated phrases could have been uses in the beginning and the end. the rest of the poem should have been filled with more descriptive stanzas about the situation.