［Abstract］Dylan Thomas is a pioneering poet in modernist poetry of the 20th century and “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” is considered to be one of his finest works. On the basis of stylistic theories, this poem is interpreted from the perspective of foregrounding, which is realized by linguistic overregularity and linguistic deviation. This stylistic analysis is to provide readers with a new perspective to understand this poem and inspirations to appreciate other English poems. To better analyze this poem, much remains to be explored and a more systematic stylistic theory is needed.
［Key words］Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,stylistic analysis,foregrounding
I. Introduction
The poem is written by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), originally published in 1951 and considered to be one of his best works. Dylan’s father has been a robust man most of his life, but in his last days, he become weak and “gentle”. In the poem Thomas is encouraging his father to continue being the mentally strong man he had previously been. The poem is an intricately structured villanelle, a nineteen-line poetic form consisting of five tercets, a unit of lines of verse, followed by a
quatrain, a unit of four lines of verse. There are two refrains and two repeating rhymes, with the first and third line of the first tercet repeated alternately until the last stanza, which includes both repeated lines. Based on Leech’s stylistic theory, Yu xueyong (Yu, 2007) constructs a new pattern on the realization of foregrounding. In the following, on the basis of this new pattern, we’ll analyze this poem from the perspective of foregrounding, which is realized by linguistic overregularity and linguistic deviation.
Ⅱ. Text
1. Do not go gentle into that good night,A1 2. Old age should burn and rave at close of day;b 3. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.A2 4. Though wise men at their end know dark is right,a 5. Because their words had forked no lightning theyb 6. Do not go gentle into that good night.A1 7. Good men, the last wave by, crying how brighta 8. Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,b 9. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.A2
10. Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,a 11. And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,b 12. Do not go gentle into that good night.A1
13. Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sighta 14. Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,b 15. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.A2 16. And you, my father, there on the sad height,a 17. Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.b 18. Do not go gentle into that good night.A1 19. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.A2 Ⅲ. Linguistic Framework
Based on Leech’s theory and Short’s theory, Yu Xueyong (Yu, 2007) constructs a new pattern to elucidate the realization of foregrounding. This pattern states that the linguistic deviation and linguistic overregularity produce foregrounding. Linguistic deviation consists of phonologic deviation, graphologic deviation, lexical deviation, grammatical deviation and deviation of meaning, while linguistic
overregularity includes phonologic overregularity, lexical overregularity, and grammatical overregularity.
Ⅳ. Linguistic Analysis and Foregrounding 4.1 Linguistic overregularity 1. Phonological overregularity
The rhyme-and-refrain pattern of the villanelle can be schematized as A1bA2 abA1 abA2 abA1 abA2 abA1A2 where letters (“a” and “b”) indicate the two rhyme sounds, upper case indicates a refrain (“A”), and superscript numerals (1 and 2) indicate Refrain 1 and Refrain 2.
1) Sound patterning ① Rhyme
In the whole poem, there are two major rhymes: /ait/ and /ei/.The alternative rhymes /ait/ and /ei/ get the poem more organized and bestow “music” to the poem. Besides, rhymes /ait/ and /ei/ echo to the pronunciation of the key words night and day, night and light, among which night corresponds to “death” while day and light refer to “live”. Therefore, the rhymes of the poem act in correspondence with “death” and “live”, reinforcing the theme of the poem.
② Assonance
/ai/ and /ei/ also appear in assonance for quite a few times in this poem, together with /ou/, /i:/, etc.
/ai/: night, dying, light, lightning, crying, wild, blinding, blind, eyes, like.
/ei/: day, age, rave, wave, frail, rage, against, late, grave, blaze, etc.
/ou/: go, old, close, through, know, no, etc. /i:/: deeds, green, grieved, meteors, be, etc.
The reappearance of these assonances in the poem creates a mood of grief, suggesting the poet’s woeful mind and human’s tragic fate in face of the inevitable death.
③ Alliteration
In the thematic sentence of the poem “Do not go gentle into that good night”, alliteration has been employed by the repetition of /g/ (go and good). Because “Do not go gentle into that good night” is an imperative sentence, suggesting an instruction and /g/ sounds persuasive and powerful, it helps to strengthen the mood and the theme of the sentence as well. Another example of alliteration in this poem is line 10
sang the sun.
2) Rhythmic patterning
The basic metrical pattern of this poem is iambic pentameter, which makes the poem well-structured, indicating the poet’s consistent emotion throughout the poem — he wants to persuade his father to fight against the death bravely. Let’s take the first stanza as an illustration. In the first line, two spondaic feet are followed by three iambic feet. The second line consists of five iambic feet. And in the third line, three iambic feet and one anapest follow one spondaic foot. The spondaic feet in the first and third line strengthen the rhythm and increase the pace of the poem, highlighting poet’s sense of urgency and the quick approaching of death at his father. The reappearance of iambic feet in the poem corresponds to the inevitability of death, reminding his father that although everyone is doomed to die one should fight against it till his last minute. In addition, a majority of the words in the poem only have one syllable, short and quick to read, which also creates the mood of urgency.
2. lexical and grammatical overregularity 1) Repetition ① Repetition of words
One of the most impressive parts of the poem is the immediate repetition of the word rage, which have totally appeared in the poem for eight times, highlighting the theme of the poem: fight against the death bravely.
Wise men, good men, wild men and grave men appear respectively from the second stanza to the fifth stanza. They represent four different types of men with distinct personalities and experiences in their life, but they all have one point in common, that is at the very last moment of their life they do not give up to struggle with their mortality. By depicting these four types of men the poet attempts to persuade his father to follow their suit.
Throughout the whole poem, the synonyms of death have appeared for many times: that good night, the dying of the light, close of day, dark, no lightning, last wave, late, blind eyes, blinding sight, etc. although they are different words, they have the same connotative meaning — death. The repetition of these words suggests that death is universal and everyone has to face it. Besides, these words leave readers a picture of darkness and despair. Also, words like burn, rave, rage have the same connotative meaning, encouraging people to struggle against death.
② Repetition of complete lines
Throughout the poem, the lines “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” have respectively appeared for four times throughout the poem. In the first place, the frequency of the appearance of these two lines exhibits the poet’s anxiety, sense of urgency and the men’s helplessness towards death. In the second place, since both of these two lines are imperative sentences, the repetition emphasize the instruction the poet gives his father: you should fight against the death bravely. Thus it strengthens the theme of the poem.
4.2 Linguistic deviation 1. Graphological deviation Loss of title
Title is an important part of the poem, playing the role of pointing out the theme of it. However, poets sometimes deliberately omit the title so as to leave the poem open to readers’ interpretation. In this poem, the poet does not title the poem and goes straight to the first stanza. Apart from giving readers more freedom to understand the poem by themselves, the loss of title can give readers an impression that poet is so anxious to encourage his father to fight against the death that he has no time to care about the title.
2. Lexical deviation
Conversion
In the topic sentence of “Do not go gentle into that good night”, the unusual use of the word gentle is quite noticeable. As we all know, gentle is an adjective. As a result of conversion, however, in this line gentle is used as an adverb. In this way, it is here not only used as a modifier of the verb go, but also connotes some other meanings: gentle portrays a sick, weak and senile character of the poet’s father. In addition, gentle only has one syllable while gently includes two, so a preference to gentle can increase the pace of the line, reinforcing the sense of urgency. Dark in line 4 has the same effect.
3. Semantic deviation
Leech defines semantic deviation as “linguistic effects involving something odd in the cognitive meaning of a certain linguistic unit, e.g., a word or phrase” (Leech, 1969). There are different kinds of semantic deviations and leech mainly discussed four types: absurdity, transference, honest deception and ambiguity. In the following, we try to employ rhetorical devices which are subject to these four types to analyze this poem. Among them are oxymoron, paradox, metonymy, metaphor, hyperbole, phonetic and lexical ambiguity.
1) Oxymoron
Oxymoron is a figure of speech in which markedly contradictory terms appear in conjunction so as to emphasize the statement (Oxford English Dictionary, 2004). In the topic sentence “Do not go gentle into that good night”, it is obvious that the word night is a metaphor of death. And from the poem as a whole, we can find that in the poet’s mind death is sinister. So it is somewhat bizarre to see night is modified by good, that is, the phrase good night is self-contradictory. By the use of good night, the poet strongly denies his father’s submissive attitude towards death. Another example of oxymoron is blinding sight in line 13. As is universally acknowledged, a blind man cannot see anything, so it’s contradictory to describe a man with blinding sight. In this stanza, the poet depicts the character of grave men who are approaching death. Although they are blind, they “could blaze like meteors and be gay”. By doing so, the poet attempts to persuade his father and readers that anyone should continue struggling in the face of death.
2) Paradox
A paradox is a statement of conclusion that seems self-contradictory or absurd but is really true (Yu, 2007). In this poem, line 17 “Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray” is a paradox. Although it seems the poet’s father cannot bless him at the same time when he curses him, it reflects the poet’s strong aspiration that his father would fight against
death. When his father has the strength to curse him, his father is inspired to combat death, and it is considered as a blessing for the poet. Line 14 “Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay” can also be regarded as a paradox, because it is strange to see that blind eyes which are forever in darkness can blaze like meteor. However, when we realize that the one who is physically blind can be spiritually strong and passionate, it is then well justified.
3) Metonymy
Metonymy is, broadly defined, a trope in which one entity is used to stand for another associated entity (Yu, 2007). In this poem, for example, the old age is a metonymy of his father or all old men. Old age is characteristic of men who are going to die soon, the poet’s father and all old men included, so one can easily associate one with another.
4) Metaphor
Metaphor is defined as “the expression of an understanding of one concept in terms of another concept, where there are some similarities or correlations between them” (Lakoff, 1987). In the poem, words including good night, the dying of the light, close of day, dark, no lightning, last wave, late, blind eyes, blinding sight are metaphors for death. In the dying of the light, for example, light refers to life where things are bright
and men are able to see and appreciate everything around them, so it’s safe to say that the dying of the light refers to the passing of life, i.e. death. Through these metaphors we can find out some connotative meanings of death. For example, good night means that death may be quiet, peaceful and free of pain, but it also indicates that when men die they are submerged in darkness forever. There are also many other metaphors in the poem, such as burn in line 2, their words had forked no lightning in line 5, etc.
5) Hyperbole
Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which exceptional exaggeration is deliberately used for emphasis rather than deception (Yu, 2007). Line 10 in this poem “Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight” can be regarded as hyperbole. It is known to all that an ordinary man is unable to catch and sing the sun, so by describing “wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight”, the poet deliberately overstates the wild men’s strength. In this way the poet exposes the truth that even the most robust men will die in the end, but they still choose to combat the death until their last minute. The poet is trying to tell his father that whatever types of men should not face death passively.
6) Phonetic ambiguity
Ambiguity can be purely phonetic, resulting from homophony which refers to the phenomenon of words with different meanings having the same sound. In line 10 of this poem, although the pronunciations of song and sun are not exactly the same, they sound similar to each other and it’s difficult to distinguish one from another at hearing of them. Thus we line 10 can be interpreted as “Wild men who caught and sang the song in flight” and “Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight” alike.
7) Lexical ambiguity
Lexical ambiguity refers to the ambiguity of an individual word or phrase can be used to express two or more meanings at the same time. Grave men in line 13 is a pun, i.e. it has two different meanings simultaneously. On one hand, Grave can be used to describe one’s personality, referring to “(of people) serious in manner, as if something sad, important of worrying has happened”. In this way, Grave men belong to a type of men as wise men, wild men and good men in other stanzas. On the other hand, grave means “a place in the ground where a dead person is buried”, so Grave men refer to dead men or men near death. Therefore, “Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight / Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay” indicates men near death can present great strength when they choose to fight against death.
Ⅴ. Stylistic Interpretation and Conclusion
Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” is a fighting song against death. He writes the poem for his dying father, urging him to pick up courage to battle against the approaching death.
Death sometimes is deemed as “good”, and some argue the dying people should “go gentle into that good night”. This is because they believe that after death they can lead a heavenly life, where troubles, pains and sufferings are completely absent. The poet, however, holds a different opinion, which is evident through the words he employs to describe death, such as night, close of day, the dying of the light, dark, blinding sight. Some of these words recur for one than once and all of them leave readers a picture of darkness and despair. Therefore, death in the poet’s mind is a dreadful ending of men’s life which everyone should, at least, mentally resist.
Adhering to this point of view, the poet thinks his father should not accept the impending death submissively. Instead, through this poem, he attempts to persuade his father to pluck up his courage and combat death violently. In this poem, the poet repeats “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” alternatively at the end of each stanza and then repeats both of them at the end of the last stanza. The repetition of these two lines expresses his emotion thoroughly and leaves a strong impact on the readers, reinforcing the theme of the
poem.
In order to persuade his father, the poet illustrates four different types of men to elaborate his idea. For example, in the second stanza, the wise men know that death is inevitable because “dark is right” and “their words had forked no lightning”, but they do not give up fighting against it and “Do not go gentle into that good night”. Of different types and with different life experience, the good men, wild men and grave men from the third stanza to the fifth stanza have one thing in common, i.e. they all resist death at the very end of their lives.
However, no matter how hard one tries he eventually can never escape from death. In the second stanza, for example, the wise men figure out that “dark is right”. As for the good men in the third stanza, “Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay”. The word frail clearly reflects men’s weakness and helplessness in face of death. In despair, the only thing his father can do is to curse, which, to be sure, can make no difference. This is where the irony of this poem and life lies. It is further echoed by the adoption of villanelle as the form of this poem. Since villanelle is traditionally employed to depict a pastoral scene, where life is peaceful and carefree, it contrasts with the theme of this poem, i.e. the impotence human beings in the face of death. Therefore, one’s struggle with death is not to beat men’s mortality. Instead, it is to prove that men,
the soul of the universe, are spiritually immortal.
From the above analysis, we can safely reach the conclusion that even though men are ultimately mortal and cannot escape from death, we should be determined to fight against death violently and not lose our faith, because though men can be physically destroyed they are spiritually unbeatable.
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