Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night

Throughout his famous poem Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night, Dylan Thomas uses an extended metaphor of darkness and nightfall to portray a speaker urging his father to fight his coming death. Extensive imagery, violently vivid language, and examples of how wise, good, wild, and grave men have fought death reveal the fervor with which the speaker begs his father not to go gently into darkness.

The poem begins with its title line, “Do not go gentle into that good night,” the first example of Thomas’s linkage of death and night or darkness. This theme continues in the next line, when he states that “old age should burn and rave at close of day,” expressing the wish that the little life left in his dying father continue to burn bright in the face of pressing darkness. The final line of the stanza, one repeated throughout the poem, urges that the dying father “rage, rage against the dying of the light.” The use of the word “rage” brings a violent and warlike tone to the poem, conjuring images of soldiers wildly fighting a battle they know they cannot win.

In the next stanza, the speaker describes wise men who acknowledge that death is inevitable and even right but continue to fight it “because their words had forked no lightning.” This idea of delaying death out of regret for goals left unfulfilled is present throughout the poem. In the next stanza, good men refuse to go gently as they imagine “how bright their frail deeds might have danced.” The speaker uses this theme of remorse for what could have been as further exhortation for his father to go down fighting.

The following two stanzas reveal another theme inherent to men on their deathbed in addition to the regret present in earlier parts: tragic understanding of their own complicity in their downfalls. Wild men “learn, too late, they grieved [the sun] on its way,” continuing the light and dark metaphor by portraying the sun’s journey across the sky as a timeline of a man’s life. This line reveals that such men realize only when it is too late that they are partially responsible for their coming deaths: by grieving the sun on its way, they hurried their own ends. In the poem’s final description of men refusing to go gently, grave men “see with blinding sight [that] blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,” showing the tragedy of knowledge. These grave men who truly see the world are determined to fight death, unlike the blissfully ignorant men who continue to be bright and gay. The image of eyes blazing like meteors ties into the idea of death as darkness, and refusing to be smothered by coming night.

It is only at the end of the poem that the speaker identifies his intended audience as his father. He begs him to “curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears,” revealing that as his father’s death approaches, the speaker wishes his father to curse him, because such violence would reveal the fight left in him. Thomas wrote the poem just before his own father succumbed to death, and although there is no evidence he ever showed it to him, it reveals the turmoil Thomas felt as he faced the death of a man with whom he’d had a tumultuous relationship. Do Not Go Gentle reveals the depth of the speaker’s (and Thomas’s) feelings for his father and his fervent desire for his parent to keep fighting and hold onto pride and dignity in the face of death. (596)

The Magistrate's Lessons

The Magistrate learns that when one is stripped of all power and the only thing left is his own insignificance, even the smallest acts of rebellion are worth something. During his "interview" with Colonel Joll after he disturbed the beatings in the public square, the Magistrate says that "if he (the guard) goes near me I will hit him with all the strength in my body. I will not disappear into the earth without leaving my mark on them." This quote reveals both the Magistrate's insignificance - he knows that the greatest impact he can have now is leaving a bruise or scar - and his new found determination to not go without a fight. He has been reduced from a position of authority to one of irrelevance, yet he is far more determined to leave his mark as a nothing than he ever was when he held power.
He also learns that there is very little that separates the body from the soul. When describing his torturer, Mandel, he says, "He deals with my soul: every day he folds the flesh aside and exposes my soul to the light." The Magistrate quickly learns that when subjected to pain and humiliation and neglect, the gap between man and beast grows much smaller. Everything that separates humans from lesser animals - self-awareness, complex thought, a sense of honor - disappears when faced with hunger and thirst and filth. The Magistrate learns that it is only through civilization - through comfort and health and care - that man can rise above the level of animals.

Emergency Powers in Egypt

Until the recent revolution, Egypt had been under "Emergency Law" for nearly thirty years. The law, which was regularly extended by President Mubarak, allowed indefinite imprisonment without trial, detention and trials of civilians my military courts, and limits on speech and association. While the Egyptian government claims the law was imposed to protect citizens from terrorism and violence, international critics claim the case of Egypt exemplifies the threats of "emergency powers": they provide ultimate control to individual leaders with no monitoring and no end in sight.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/30/AR2006043001039.html

Fraiman's "The Humiliation of Elizabeth Bennet"

• Fraiman states that the main point of the novel is not Darcy's overcoming his pride and Elizabeth her prejudice. Rather, she believes that Elizabeth is forced to overcome her own masculine pride and succumb to the more feminine humility.
• An effective example used by Fraiman to show Elizabeth's disregarding of her own pride and deferring to Darcy is that Elizabeth is forced to accept the partiality and prejudice of her earlier views, while Darcy successfully defends his own as impartial. Elizabeth's earlier opinions are taken as those of a silly woman, influenced too much by her hurt pride from her first interaction with Darcy, while Darcy is never forced to revise his early opinions. Even when he changes his mind about Jane, it is his own decision, not because Elizabeth told him he was wrong.
• Fraiman also discusses Mary's definitions of "pride" and "vanity" as they relate to Elizabeth's sacrificing of her own pride. Mary says that "Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us." Fraiman claims that Darcy is able to retain his pride because he can afford to - due to his power as a noble and, even more importantly, as a man, he doesn't have to care what others think of him - his own opinion is the most important. In contrast, the poorer and female Elizabeth is forced to rely on the opinions of others - she must sacrifice masculine pride for feminine vanity.
• While her general thesis is effective and logical, Fraiman delves into psychoanalysis of Elizabeth and her relationship with her father. The claims that Elizabeth's close relationship with her father stems from her "penis envy" and Mr. Bennet's giving of his daughters to their husbands represents his sacrificing his own sexual pleasure seem a bit ridiculous. While I agree that Elizabeth is a more masculine character than her sisters and the other female characters, I think Fraiman here gets a bit caught up in her own cleverness.
• Fraiman's final point is that Elizabeth represents the uniting of the emerging merchant middle-class and the waning nobles, as evidenced by her linking Mr. Gardiner and Darcy in friendship. While it's an interesting idea, it's fairly undeveloped - Fraiman seemed to tack it on the end of her essay, as an afterthought.
• Besides the previously mentioned tangents, I agree with Fraiman. Even though Elizabeth is generally thought of as a revolutionary female, the only way she can achieve happiness is through sacrificing her independence, both of body and mind.
• An open eye towards the many examples of Elizabeth's forced deference reveals the similarities between her and her sisters, and shows the relatively small amount of independence she has compared with all she lacks. Fraiman's piece has given me a more critical view of Austen's themes of female independence and a greater appreciation for her skill in subtleties as a writer.