The Uncategorized Father: From Self-Manipulation to Self-Creation in Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night
Rameil Sayad Sangar1, Dr.Hossein Sabouri2
Citation : Rameil Sayad Sangar,Dr.Hossein Sabouri, The Uncategorized Father: From Self-Manipulation to Self-Creation in Dylan Thomas's Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature 2018, 6(5) : 1-8
In a letter, Thomas acknowledged that he couldn't show the poem, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night, to his father. The poem was inspired by his aged, hopeless, and dying father. The persona, presumably Thomas himself in real life, brings examples of four types of men who, despite their failures in life, don't go gentle toward death. He does it in order to encourage the dismayed father not to surrender easily to the 'close of day'. Based on Thomas's assertion, the current paper, biographically studies the poem and tries to demonstrate that the frail image Thomas portrays of his father, accompanied by the four ideal characteristics he desires himself and his father to obtain, bolster the specious reasoning in the reader and the persona in their struggle of identification with the self and the other. The study investigates the causes that generate such misrepresentation and propensity for manipulating the other in order to achieve self-identity. Commodification, alienation, anxiety of influence, and capitalism are among the motivators. The study concludes by showing that the floating idealistic images on the surface meaning of the poem, are what Thomas desires his father and himself to acquire before their deaths.