What is the main theme in the poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into the Night" by Dylan Thomas?

Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into the Night" was
written as a plea to his dying father, David John Thomas, an English grammar teacher who
had a powerful influence in his life.  Ironically, Dylan Thomas himself died a year
later.

While the poem has three parts to it, it is an
affirmation of life to the last breath, a refusal to die quietly and passively.  In the
first part, the speaker provides an introduction to the speaker's message.  Then, in the
four stanzas that follow, the speaker provides examples of what he means.  In telling
his father to "rage against the night," the speaker offers examples of what wise, good,
brave, and wild men have done:

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Old age should burn and rave at close of
day

Good men,....crying how bright their frail deeds might
have danced in a green
bay

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Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
and learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,

Grave men,
near death, who see with blinding
sight

Finally, in the last
stanza, the tone is much more personal as the speaker addresses father exhorting him to
fight against death as a man should.

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And, you, my father, there on that sad
height,/Curse, bless me now, with your fierce tears, /I
pray

Do not go gentle into the
night.