" Rather than endlessly musing upon his father's death, like a drumbeat Thomas simply repeats that his father must not "go gentle into that good night." With every tercet, the repeated lines take on a different nuance. Reading the poem is like hearing a favorite song sung in a different way, again and again -- every time, a different shade of meaning is brought forth in the refrain of the poem. It is all too easy for a free verse poem to say the same thing in different ways: Thomas uses the same words again and again to convey different shades of emotion: good men, wild men, grave men, all for different reasons, he states, have not borne the inevitability of death with meekness.

The reader comes to understand that repeated words are a paradox -- Thomas tells his father, begs his father, to do what is futile -- to...
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