Hey guys. I hope everyone had a good week! We’re nearing the end of the semester, though, so hang in there! I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to go home for the summer. I am way too excited. So, anyway, for this week’s blog post, I wanted to do it in honor of my grandpa. I didn’t know him very well because of our language barrier, but my dad has told me so many great stories about him. He’s pretty much my hero. He would have been 70 years old today but he died 5 years ago of leukemia. Sorry if I bring anyone down.
This week, I’ll be looking at “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas and “Cancer” by My Chemical Romance.
“Do not go gentle into that good night” was written by Dylan Thomas and first published in 1937.
“Cancer” was released on their album “Black Parade” in 2006.
Here is the song, as usual:
Also, here’s the music video. Warning: The quality is kind of bad and it also might make you cry. I thought I would be brave so I watched it yesterday–couldn’t stop crying. Just a fair warning:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
God men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, and grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with the blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and by gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
This poem was given to my AP English class and it was hanging on my poetry wall so I knew I had to use it. It really is a beautiful poem. There’s a certain kind of melancholic desperation and intensity. There are two key phrases that are repeated in this poem: “Do not go gentle into that good night” and “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” They both have that melancholic intensity that emanates throughout the entire poem. The speaker is saying that once death approaches, you should fight it, even though you know it’s unavoidable. Though men who, in their day, were able to persuade with the power of words, it is useless when their time comes, so they must fight as much as they can. Good deeds seem smaller once the darkness approaches and even the wild men realize how valuable life is, so they must fight. At first, it just seems that the speaker really values life and the fight to stay alive, but in the last stanza, they bring it to a personal level. This allows for a personal connection of the reader. Up until now, the speaker alternated between the two phrases at the endings of the previous stanzas, but in this one, the one about her father, she uses both. This is because to the speaker, their father was all of these things: the wise one, the good one, and even the wild one. The speaker refuses to allow their father to give up and asks for any kind of fight because the speaker refuses to let their father go quietly. At first glance, it does not seem so desperate, but the repetition of these phrases say otherwise, almost as if the speaker is reassuring himself that the fight is worth it.
I picked this song to go with the poem because of the different points of view in these pieces. I’m not comparing lyrics, but the intensity in which Gerard Way, the lead singer of MCR, sings emanates the fight that the speaker of the poem longs for. The instruments of this song especially emphasize the melancholy of this situation and only intensify with the tone of the vocalist. If you’ve heard any other My Chemical Romance songs, you would know that this is quite a change for them genre-wise. There is so much pain behind his voice which he tries to hide with the words he is saying, and that is exactly what the speaker of the poem does as well. When I hear this, I can see the speaker of the poem with her father in a hospital room. They’re both crying and neither one want to let go. The speaker is asking to fight death, but her father can do so much. Both are fighting so desperately for the chance to cling on to that final moment. The struggle continues on for both of them, but I really think the poem is asking not only the father to fight, but for the speaker to fight as well. The difference is that the father is fighting death while the speaker is fighting to keep himself together.
Oh man, that was actually tough to write but I got through it. *pats self on back* I first heard this song during my “punk rock” stage (don’t pretend you didn’t have that, too. Everyone did) and it always made me cry, and it still does. When my grandpa died, I stopped listening to it, and I didn’t actually hear it again until I had to write this post. It was intense. I’m so so sad that My Chemical Romance broke up. They were my first band obsession so this just proves that I’m getting old. Ew. Anyway, thanks for reading. I hope it didn’t make you too sad and for those who actually watched the video, I’m offering hugs at the end of class for the emotional trauma I may have caused you. I mean it. That video messed me up. Wow, I get really off topic a lot. Sorry. Thanks for reading!
In memory of Ignacio R. Flores
*March 28, 1943 – June 25, 2008*