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| Posted By: Daniel Brown Posted On: May 30, 2014 Views: 273 | Thouths on "Do Not Go Gentle" I first read this poem when I was 17 and my father 50. Like many, our relationship had moments of rage as well as gentleness. Now I am over 50 and my father has been gone a few years. I see the universality of these lines. Once I felt sorry for Thomas that his father was apparently surrendering to death. From the text I felt the poet's frustration and fear of impending loss. But this was in the third person. Now that I have experienced this process, I see the poem as less an indictment of Thomas's father and more a capturing of the fear of the transition of the adult son to independence. A father can be a great source of wisdom and comfort as a man goes through life. The poem's explicid reader receives an attempt to return to a father some of the counsel and comfort given to a son in a futile attempt to forestall the inevitable. While death is eventual, the speaker seems to prefer defiance rather than acceptance. The speaker advocates that futile defiance. Ironic that Thomas died as he did. |