Literary Analysis of the Theme of Death in: "Daddy", "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night", and "Dulce et Decorum Est"

The theme of death within literary works is often used in conjunction with other themes to better communicate one big idea throughout the text. In Sylvia Plath's "Daddy", Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" and Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum est" all writers use the theme of death. However, the manner in which they use the theme of death are unique to their poems and as such, help to convey larger themes are central to the poems.

"Daddy" by Sylvia Plath is one of her most famous poems and at its most basic level, is about a girl with an electra complex and a horrible taste in men. However, upon closer examination of this poem one can see the use of the theme of death and how Plath uses it to increase the impact of her metaphors and hyperboles. So with that in mind, one can see how this poem can also be interpreted as being about a woman with a father who dominated her so much that even after his death,  he still leached his way into her life in the form of an abusive husband. With the line "Daddy, I have had to kill you I You died before I had time"(6-7)  the speaker is talking about how the father was such a dominating man that the speaker would have had to figuratively kill him in order to be free of him. This killing may have taken the form of moving out and away, perhaps to college, but the father died too soon for the speaker to have that kind of emotional and psychological catharsis. Furthermore, this poem employs a diction that has a noticeable nursery-rhyme style to it furthering the idea that the speaker remained childlike due to her state of submission to her father.

The speaker goes on to describe her quality of life she led while under her father's rule, often identifying with whole cultures of victimized people and her casting her father a Nazi, the devil, and all around monster. "With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck I And my Tame pack and my Tame pack I I may be a bit of a Jew." (37-39). Here we can see how the speaker has identified herself and her situation with that of a gypsy and Jewish people who during WWII were being rounded up and sent to concentration camps to die. As a result of this incredibly oppressive environment the speaker attempted suicide at age thirty, yet despite all that her father has put her through she still loves him. "I was ten when they buried you./ At twenty I tried to die/ And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do." (56-58). Here we can again see how Plath uses death to further the impact her poem has and add further complexity to the speaker. Yet, because her suicide attempt has failed and she was unable to end her suffering and was unable to get back to her father, the speaker "[...] made a model of [him], I A man in black with a Meinkampf look" (64-65). In saying this the speaker means that she has found a man who resembles her father with his domineering and abusive nature. This man like her father was a monster to her and as she describes it "drank [her] blood for a year/Seven years, if you want to know." This most likely means that he, like her father sucked the life out of her, draining her till she finally severed the tie and "killed" them both. This can be seen in the lines   "If I've killed one man, I've killed two-The vampire who said he was you ...There's a stake in your fat black heart ...Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through." (71-80) This last lines show how the speaker has finally been able to emotionally and psychologically sever herself from these men and how by "killing" her husband she was able to also kill her father and the part of herself that still held onto him.

Conversely to Plath, Thoman Dylan deals with the theme of death in a much more concrete way. His uses the theme of death is absolutely central to understanding this poem as it is what the poem is primarily concerned with. Written as a villanelle ode to Thomas' dying father, this poem views death as something to fight against, something to struggle against till one's last dying breath. To simply give into death, to "go gentle into that good night", would be an absolute tragedy and an utter waste of one's life. The lines "Do not go gentle into that good night/ Old age should bum and rave at close of days;/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light “(1-3) mean that one should not simply let death take them. That they should not so easily succumb to the comforts of death, "the dying of the light" (3), instead that they should fight to live, fight to cling to life for as long as inhumanly possible.

The speaker is calling upon all the types of men to rage against the dying of the light, he is saying that any kind of man, not matter what they have done in their lives should want to fight for more.  With stanza two we are given images of "wise men" whose words and opinions have become obsolete and know that death has come to call upon them. Yet these men still reject death because their works have not have the impact they wanted them to have. In stanza three Thomas gives us the "good men" who also reject by death but because they lament at all the things they could have done had they lived longer.  When we are given the "wild men" we learn that these are the men who captured the world around them only to learn that such a thing is not possible. That the world they tried so hard to capture will change and fade away along with them. The "grave men" in this poem are those who are already dying. These men have no illusions that death will not come for them, but they still want more of life and like all the other men refuse to submit to the complacency of death. In the last stanza we see the reader address his father and urge him to not give into death, instead to go out defiantly, heroically and dignified.

The lines "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" (3,9, 15) and "Do not go gentle into that good night" (1,6, 12,) repeat throughout this poem and serve to not only remind the reader that though death is imminent one should not take it lightly, but to emphasis the idea that death is something to fight against with everything a person has in them.

Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est " is no stranger to death as it is a poem about a soldier fighting in World War 11. Owen uses the theme of death to give further depth to the imagery within his poem. This poem is filled with very rich and repugnant images of war and Owen's uses these images to paint a grotesque picture of war that attempts to dissuade people from seeking glory on the battlefield. In the first stanza we see the absolute misery that the soldiers must endure as limp along the country "drunk with fatigue" (7). These men are not cheerful, they do not joke to lighten the mood; they are absolutely defeated and seem to have no will and carry on simply for the sake of carrying on. The second stanza we see Owen's use of dramatic description at the death of a soldier who failed to put on his gas mask in time. "And floundering like a man in fire or lime.-/ Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,/ As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. Finally my dreams before my helpless sight,/ He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning." (12-16) here the troops have been awoken from their stupor by an enemy gas attack and unfortunately there are those who were unable to get a mask on in time.  Here, the narrator has focused on one man in front of him who is one of those poor souls. This man does not simply die and drop to the ground, instead he flounders around and sinks to his death under Owen's metaphorical "green sea". Everything in this poem, especially this particular scene, seems to take place in slow motion. As though because death is constantly hanging over them, it slows everything down, it encompasses everything and makes it dirty, dreamlike, murky, and painfully slow. The death of this soldier continues to haunt the narrator in his dream, as if to say that these images of death and horror will stay with a person for a lifetime. That there is no getting out of this mindset even if one is home surrounded by everything but death.

In the third stanza we again see Owen's use of dramatic imagery and the aftermath of the gas attack. In this stanza we see how the soldier's body is being unceremoniously carted off and how his face has changed into a reminder of what has happened for the reader, a reminder of the horrific realities of war. "His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;/If you could hear, at/ every jolt, the blood/ Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs/Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud/Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,-/My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/ To children ardent for some desperate glory,/ The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est/ Propatria mori." (20-28) Here the narrator is describing the body of the man he had seen get killed, just a body. Yet, he does so with such powerful imagery and expert use of simile and hyperbole. The narrator is saying that if those were promoting "The old Lie" had seen what he has seen, they would not be so quick to tell young me to go to war. I believe that this poem was Owen's attempt at dissuading people from joining the war, and to educate those back home who knew nothing of war. Owen's use of the theme of death means to help supplement his overall message of "War is Ugly. War is Cruel. Do Not Join Up."