Do not go gentle into that good night: Motifs

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Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform the text’s major themes.

“The dying of the light”/“That good night”

As a villanelle, Thomas’s poem features two refrains that repeat at designated points in the text. The refrains invoke separate motifs that are nonetheless closely related—that is, they invoke the motif of “the dying of the light” (lines 3, 9, 15, and 19) and the motif of “that good night” (lines 1, 6, 12, and 18). Both motifs use images of approaching darkness to reference the inevitability of death. This meaning is self-evident in the case of “the dying of the light,” which indirectly references death by using light as a symbol for life. When the light dies out, life does too. The speaker’s repeating phrase “that good night” also references death, but it does so in a different way. Whereas “the dying of the light” frames death as the end point of a degenerative process, “that good night” frames death as an enticing respite from the challenges of life. Indeed, a “good night” suggests comfort, warmth, and restful sleep. Both refrains express a need to resist death, but death itself comes off differently in each. Death is either a weakening force that deprives us vitality, or else it tempts us into giving up. In either case, we must resist.

Types of Men

Throughout the poem’s middle stanzas, the speaker describes different types of men who have resisted death. The men described here don’t seem to represent particular people the speaker has known in life. Instead, the speaker describes a series of archetypes. Each of these archetypes has a distinct relationship to death, which means they also have different reasons for resisting it. For instance, although “wise men” (line 4) understand that death is a natural part of life, they resist because they haven’t yet had a chance to make their mark by passing on their hard-won wisdom. “Good men” (line 7) rage against death because, even though they have done many good deeds, when they look back on their life, they regret not having done more. In a different vein, when “wild men” (line 10) who’ve always lived in the moment find themselves at the end too soon, they want to stave off death to keep enjoying life’s pleasures. Finally, “grave men” (line 13) reject death when, nearing the end, they realize that happiness is still available to them. The speaker invokes each of these archetypes to encourage their father to find his own reason for resisting death.

Sources of Light

The speaker references several different sources of light. In the second stanza, for instance, the speaker describes how “wise men” (line 4) might defy death out of a sense that “their words had forked no lightning” (line 5). Here, lightning represents a moment of insight or inspiration. If wise men have failed to produce words that “forked . . . lightning,” it means they’ve failed to use their wisdom to spark inspiration among others. Likewise, in the fifth stanza, the speaker refers to the blaze of a meteor to describe how “grave men” (line 13), blinded by their own solemnity, might learn to see that happiness is still available to them. In both examples, the sources of light symbolize flash of insight that can intensify the experience of living. By contrast, the speaker’s reference to the sun in the fourth stanza represents life itself (lines 10–12):

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Here, the speaker imagines “wild men” whose style of living in the present moment has kept them from preparing for death. When the sun goes on in its “flight” and leaves them behind, they lose the very source of life itself. All these different sources of light plays against the poem’s two refrains, which reference “the dying of the light” as day transitions into “that good night.”

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