Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

As discussed elsewhere in this guide, the speaker of “Do not go gentle in that good night” reveals at the end of the poem that they are addressing their father. If the reader presumes that the speaker of the poem is the poet himself, an exploration of Dylan Thomas’s relationship with his own father at the time of his father’s death illuminates the emotional depth of the poem and the urgent tone with which the speaker commands their audience to resist their own mortality.

Thomas’s father, David John Thomas, known as D.J., introduced Thomas to poetry. A Senior English Master with an Honors degree in English from Aberystwyth University, D.J. taught at the Swansea Grammar School. D.J. Thomas immersed himself in literature, and the family home was full of books, giving Dylan Thomas early exposure to literature. From an early age, Thomas read his father’s books, a part of his childhood experience to which Thomas referred in several interviews.

D.J. Thomas lived with poor health for many years, and in 1933, when Dylan Thomas was 19 years old, he was diagnosed with cancer of the throat. The treatment for this kind of cancer at this time was painful, involving courses of radium needles to fight the disease.