The two poems ‘’Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’’ by Dylan Thomas and ‘’Let Me Die A Youngman’s Death’’ by Roger McGough ostensibly appear different, but both share the theme of death. The two poets present this theme in clearly different ways. On one hand, ‘’Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’’ is an allusion to the speakers father’s impending death which makes the poet resent death, whilst, in contrast, McGough keeps a humorous attitude to death and accepts it. In ‘’Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’’; the speaker asserts that old men at the ends of their lives should resist death as strongly as they can. In fact, they should only leave this world kicking and screaming, furious that they have to die at all. At the end of the poem, we discover that the speaker has a personal stake in this issue: his own father is dying. Roger McGough’s poem is humorous and anecdotal, but at its core is an earnest plea to die a one lived, with dignity, energy and passion still writ clear in every line and feature; to be remembered for the exuberant and egregious personality of identity and not what old age and disease morph virile men into.
The first stanza of ‘’Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’’ is an apostrophe of the person the speaker is addressing. Beginning with line 1 ‘’Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’’, we have an extended metaphor in which day represents life and night represents death. ‘Old age should burn and rave at close of day’ here the poet complains in the face of death. In the third line of this stanza the repetition of the first word of this line, ‘’rage’’ emphasizes it with an uncanny doubling. The end of the line is united by the similar vowel sounds in the middle of ‘’dying’’ and ‘’light’’, a technique called assonance. On the other hand in the first stanza of