Analysis of Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines by Dylan Thomas

Context:Dylan Thomas was an English poet who rose to fame as a poet at a very young age. A school dropout at the age of 16, who started working in newspaper agencies and his works started publishing in them. He was noticed in the literary world as he wrote and published the poem, “Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines”. The poet has written a very religious poem where he speaks of the importance of hope in the lives of people, and how it keeps pushing people to live their life. Thomas says that hope is a feeling that a person feels when he is surrounded by dark hours in his life, and hope breaks in like a ray of light in the place where sun cannot reach. The poet uses beautiful metaphors in this poem to show the strength of hope. He uses words like “light” for hope, which used for divine and serene things in literature.

The poet has used beautiful imagery in this poem to express bow it feels for a man when he suddenly gets a ray of hope in the midst of all the dark hours and struggles that he has been going through. What makes this poem different from other poems about hope and religion is that Dylan Thomas has used beautiful words to describe the change in the human body drowned in distress, and how it raises of it with joy, and how his life and strength rejuvenates as he sees a single way of getting out of his problems, and when he gets a sign that everything happens and ends with good, only that it takes the right time to arrive. Until then, the poet describes how a person should hope on having hopes and wait until he sees a sign from God.

The poet has used the parts of the body to express his thoughts and to show how it feels when a person in distress gets a single hope to get out of it. How a wave of joy passes through the entire body and the mind rejuvenates on the sight of hope.

Rhyming Scheme and Structure: The poet has used a very unusual rhyming scheme in this poem, which is not seen in many poems in the literary world. However, it is easy to overlook the rhyming scheme and pattern in this poem. The rhyming scheme used in this poem is a b c c b a. For example:

Light breaks on secret lots,-a

On tips of thought where thoughts smell in the rain;-b

When logics die,-c

The secret of the soil grows through the eye,-c

And blood jumps in the sun;-b

Above the waste allotments the dawn halts.-a

In this poem, after every sentence in each phrase, the poet has used punctuation marks to arrange pauses and stops wherever needed.  The poet has not used a lot of punctuations in the poem, which gives a unique and fresh appeal to the poem.

Theme: The themes of this poem are imagery and religion. The poet has used beautiful description of the way how each and every element in the nature tries to inspire us in life that after every dark phase in our lives, the happiness arrives sooner. Hope is something which holds life together, which gives people a reason to live and continue life, which gives them a reason to keep going through the difficult times in life. Hope is something which feels like sunshine in the cold winters, hope is something which feels like blood rushing through the body from the skull to the toe. A single ray of hope feels like a wave of life running through the body when there is no reason of living remains. Hope is something which brings light to the dark minds, and helps the person to believe that all ends and happens for good.

The poet says that there is no logic or reasoning that we can apply to understand how hope works, or how it saves us from our problems. But when it appears, it brings a person could feel all the best things of the nature at one time. He cannot explain how it feels to have a ray of hope when everything around him seems to be drowning in sorrow and distress. But it feels like the most divine moment, where tears wet the smile of his lips.

Deep Meaning: The deep meaning of this poem is that hope never leaves our side in life, all we need to do is have faith that every night ends in a morning, which brings light in the darkness. Hope is like light, which breaks in where there is darkness. Hope is something which pushes a wave of life in the body and brings warmth in a cold winter. There is no logic to understand how hope works, but when it appears, it brings divinity and joys along.

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