Write a short paragraph comparing and contrasting the themes in "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" and "Do not go gentle into that good night." Your response should include at least one example of how each poem uses sound or structure to develop its theme
Answers
The two poems center around the theme of death, yet they pass on inverse messages. In " Don't Go Gentle Into That Good Night, " Thomas used the refrain " Rage, rage against the diminishing of the light" to develop the theme "No matter what, it is important to battle to stay alive." Yeats, on the other hand, uses parallelism throughout "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death" to show that life and death are balanced. This builds up the theme of the poem: "Because death is inevitable / inescapable, it doesn't matter if one lives or dies.
When it comes to similarities, we may talk about the theme of both the poems which deals with the topic of “Death”
However, talking about contrasts, both the poets portray different message by using the same theme. Using the refrain “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”, Thomas tries to convey the message of not giving up on life and to fight and survive.
This poem was meant for his father who was at the verge of death. On the other hand, Yeats, with the help of parallelism tries to portray that both life and death are in a balanced form, developing the idea that everyone will die at one point of time, thus, it does not really matter if one is alive or not.