Poema

Looking at my checklist
Like day and night or spring and fall, life comes and goes. It is the memories, both good and bad, that stay with us and the rest go to a place that nobody knows. Linda Pastan’s “Go Gentle” and Dylan Thomas’ “Do not go gentle into that good night” both deal with the loss of a parent and the emotions involved in the process but, while Pastan’s more calm approach suggeststhat her acceptance of death, in such manner, is directly related to a good relationship with her father while Dylan feels his relationship with his father is unfinished and urges his father to fight for his life.
Losing a loved one is inevitable because life is a cycle, a natural process, as people live to die. Emotions are part of this process. Feelings for other people become natural and inmost cases people become dependent on each other, creating a bond. These facts are presented in both poems. Pastan states that life is like nature, a cycle, and that death is the last stop for people. The speaker in “Go Gentle” compares life with the seasons of the year where, “Outside the fall goes on without us/how easily the leaves give in” (Pastan 10-11) to explain to her father how naturaldeath is. The speaker looks back in time to instances in which she spends time with her father by telling him “Remember when you taught me/how to swim? Let go, you said” (Pastan 5/6). Later she also says “the lake will hold you up” (Pastan 7); by the use of “the lake”, it is clear that they shared many moments like this one and that this lake was frequently visited by the family. Dylan, even thoughhe refuses to let his father go, also uses imagery to let the reader understand that he knows that life is a cycle. The title of Dylan’s poem “Do not go gentle into that good night” is one of the many times he uses the term night, making a connection between how life must come to an end just like the night which is the last part of the daily cycle. The aggressive tone of the poem suggests thatDylan is not ready to lose his father just yet and he makes it very clear with the repetition of the last line on four out of the six stanzas “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” (Dylan 3).
Losing a parent is a very emotional, painful situation but is something that will happen and is inevitable. People react very different to all kinds of situations in life, and death in a family is not anexception. There is a direct connection between how people react to the death of a loved one and what kind of relation was sustained between the two. In both poems, the father was on the verge of death, possibly with a terminal illness. The narrators have time to reflect on how their relationship with their father has been or in Dylan case, the things missing from that relationship. Pastan uses aserene, relaxed tone which suggests that the speaker is in peace with what is about to happen. This is not to be confused with wanting her father to die. The speaker describes how “[her father has] grown wings of pain/and flap around the bed like a wounded gull” (Pastan 1-2), the motion on these lines contrast the rest of the poem. The motion in the previous line shows that even though the speakerunderstands that death is something natural, the pain her father is going through has left a strong, not pleasant, image in her mind and she feels for his suffering. Pastan recognizes the delicate state and weakness of her father “calling for water, calling for tea, for grapes/whose skins you cannot penetrate” (Pastan 3-4). These lines clarify how weak her father has become and that she is readyto let him go. The speaker reverses roles with her father “I long to say, Father let go” (Pastan 8) and urges her father to surrender to death. The speaker tries to make her father understand how natural death is; that a person is just part of something bigger that keeps going even after death, “Outside the fall goes on without us/How easily the leaves give in” (Pastan 10-11). The willingness of...