Shakespeare within his play uses literary devices on characters facing forces such as love, death, fate which are all beyond their control. One main theme bringing the poems ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’ by Dylan Thomas, On My First Sonne by Ben Jonson and Hamlet the play by William Shakespeare, is death. Moreover, the poems are based on real life experiences involving lots of emotion.
The poem by Dylan Thomas was about his father dying and he expresses his emotions through anger as within his poem he repetitively stated, ‘Rage, rage against the dying of light’. The second poem by Ben Jonson is about his son dying however, he shows acceptance to his death and believes he should celebrate the 7 years he had with son rather than mourning and showing anger. Ben shows this by stating, ‘ Seven yeeres thou wert lent to me..’. Rudyard Kipling’s poem was based on going to war and being enthusiastic about it he showed this by stating, ‘We can make good all loss except the loss of turning back’. This statement means getting shot in broad daylight is not the worry however, not going to war and staying at home is the worst decision you could make as its cowardly. Lastly, hamlet written by Shakespeare was about hamlets hate towards his uncle due to him having an affair with his mum and killing his father to take the throne. He then elaborate’s on this by talking about whether he should let everything out and go to the full extent of proving his uncle guilty and getting revenge by killing him or to just let it be, he represents this by quoting, ‘Whether ’tis Nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles..’. As a brief summary of all these pieces of writing they all relate by showing the forces beyond our control such as fate, death and love. However, its all shown in different ways and looked at from different point of views.
I am now going to talk about literary devices such as metaphors, personification and metre used by the authors to explore forces beyond our control.
A metaphor used in Hamlets soliloquy by Shakespeare is ‘The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’. Here fortune is described as an aggressive force that is trying to attack you with slings and arrows. Hamlet believes fate is against him by representing fate as slings and arrows which are harmful weapons and is contemplating whether to take the easy way out by suicide or to go against fate and kill his uncle. However, hamlet assumes that suicide is a postive option in his current situation. He then realises suicide is not a wise option as he states, ‘..Who would fardels bear..but that the dread of something after death, the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns puzzles the will’. By hamlet stating ‘the undiscovered country’, representing death as he sees death as an undiscovered country.
A metaphor used in the poem On My First Sonne by Ben Jonson is ‘Seven yeeres thou wert lent to me, and i thee pay, exacted by thy fate’, this shows Ben’s son being lent to him being described as an object. Moreover, the statment, ‘on the just day’ implys that fate is fair and that the debt of his son’s life needed to be paid back. However, he then leads onto another point of view by saying, ‘O could i lose all father, now’, this shows him changing the agony of his loss. Even though his son is gone he remains being a father.
A metaphor shown in Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas would be ‘..words had forked no lightning’. This metaphor expresses that the words have never impacted life ‘lightning’ being the metaphor. This links to On My First Sonne as both poems refer back to their own poems the effect of this is showing that even words cannot bring back the dead however hard they try.Death is the force being shown here.
I am now going to talk about personification and its relations to forces beyond our control.
An example of personification in the poem On My First Sonne by Ben Jonson is ‘To have so soone scap’d worlds, and fleshes rage’, this represents the world raging. Life is described as a place of pain and anger this refers to forces beyond our control. This could link with Hamlets soliloquy by him mentioning flesh also personifying it-Hamlet sees death as an end to ‘The heart-ache,and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to?’ here flesh is personifying the pain that life involves.
A statement in the poem Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan thomas representing personification would be, ‘..the dying of light’ this uses a human feature for light by describing it as dying which is not possible. Furthermore, this refers to death as the force beyond our control. He could also be representing light as life as its the opposite to dark being represented as death.
I am now going to talk about the different writers use of metre and the relation to forces beyond our control.
In Ben Jonson’s poem the metaphor that relates to lending makes us feel that Jonson has accepted the death of his son. The sustained iambic pentameter further supports this theme of acceptance by using statements such as, ‘Farewell, thou child of my right hand and joy’ and ‘As what he loves may never like too much’, this is accepting however, is rather tragic as his not allowing himself to love a human being again. The poem is put to a sudden stop in the line, ‘O, could I loose all father now. For why..’. When reading this we hit an invisible brick wall of silence expressing silence of death which refers to forces beyond our control. Furthermore, the line ‘Ben Jonson his best piece of poetrie’, the iambic pentameter suddenly stops here emphasising the fact that’s his most important piece of poetry is ironically about the death of his son.
Metre is shown within Dylan Thomas’s poem Do not go gentle into that good night
Metre being shown in Hamlets soliloquy
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