Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet, had great love and respect for his father. When his father died, Thomas expressed his deep grief in one of the best-known poems in the English language. Over and over again, speaking to his dead father, Dylan repeats these phrases …

Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage against the dying of the light.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage against the dying of the light.

Because, in these lines, death is the enemy, the poem has sometimes been labeled “unChristian.” But there is a particular sense in which the poem is very Christian. Thomas was outraged by his father’s death, and he expressed this openly and honestly. There was no attempt to cover up the wound inflicted on his spirit by the brutal finality of death. “Do not go gentle into that good night” brings to mind much of what theology, psychiatry, and psychology have been saying about some…