Speaker and characters

The poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas includes several characters: the speaker himself, his father, and several categories of people - “wise men” (l. 4), “good men” (l. 7), “wild men” (l. 10), “grave men” (l. 13). While the relationship between the speaker and the father is clearly more personal, the other characters are only illustrative of various human typologies. The speaker uses a variety of people only to show that, regardless of their background, all people have death in common and their refusal to accept it.

The speaker 

The speaker, or the lyrical I, in the poem is visible through the direct address “Do not go gentle into that good night” (l. 1) and the use of the possessive pronoun “my” (l. 16) and personal pronoun “I” (l. 17).

This speaker, who can also be seen as a lyrical version of the poet himself, is enraged by the idea of death and calls for the receivers of his message to refuse accepting death in a calm way, without pu...