Touching humans the most is the acceptance of unstoppable death. We all know that death will be our fate some day, but how we accept that or how we deal with it is left to each individual. Basically there are three ways to live with this daunting fact. Waiting for death to come without ever enjoying life is what some do. Fulfillingly is how some people choose to live. Dylan Thomas seems to support those who live life excessively, dangerously, recklessly, and on the edge as shown in his poem “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”

Structurally, the poem emphasizes raging against death as he repeats this exhortation in the last line in every other stanza. He could have chosen such words as, “Don’t give into...” but he used “rage,” which lends a tone of aggressiveness or rebelliousness. At the end of every other stanza are the words advising us not to go gentle into death. Well, the negative of gentle would be rough or hard or fighting and Thomas tells us to approach death in such a way.

Using three examples of men, grave, wise, and old, he illustrates a universal idea implying that every person at the end of his life regrets how he lived life. The only way to keep this from happening is to live life to the fullest, experiencing as much as we can from now until that day of reckoning. Death is inevitable, leaving us no hope of escape.