Does Dylan Thomas Use Light In Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

Death is certainly a heavy topic in a myriad of ways, but it brings forth a controversial and salient question: should death be passively accepted or aggressively dispelled? Both Dylan Thomas in “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night” and Emily Dickinson in “Because I could not stop for Death” utilize symbols of light and dark to address their answers to the question. However, it is in their different characterization of death and the perspective they refer to that they are able to effectively carry out two vastly different messages on death. In both poems, light is used as a symbol to depict aspects of life. In Dickinson’s poem, she utilizes light as the warmth of life. She characterizes light in the form of the sun, personifying it as a