How Does Dylan Thomas Present Death In My Last Duchess

vehemently against his father giving up on life, he then also describes death as “that good night” which may mean he sympathises on some level with his father’s fatalistic attitude. This idea is also supported by the fact that Thomas in real life rarely had any money and was a heavy drinker, something that eventually led to his death in 1953. So it could be the case that in the end Dylan Thomas did go gentle into that good night, or maybe it was his own way to rage against the dying of the light.

In My Last Duchess, the vulnerability and fragility of life is shown through the monologue of an unhinged Duke. He is speaking to a Count's servant about his last Duchess, as he is planning to marry the Count's daughter. The poem uses subtle foreboding and eloquent speech to portray the Duke's obsessive madness.

The Duke begins talking about a portrait of his wife hanging on the wall, adding, “as if she were alive”. These little hints and Freudian slips the Duke makes add up to and culminate in the heavy implication of her death at his behest, “I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together.” We learn this was the case because of the
While arguably both are to some degree inflexible and solipsistic, they still have amount of caring and emotion towards world around them. The outlook of the Duke takes the negative attitudes to the extreme, while dispensing with the ethical virtues. He explains how even if he had “skill in speech” and was able to articulate his feelings to his wife it would still require him to “stoop”. This demonstrates his cold and uncompromising nature by not only stating that he would never be willing to concede any ground whatsoever, but because he is quite evidently a persuasive speaker as he eloquently argued his points up till then. This shows how he is quite willing to bend and manipulate the truth to suit