Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and again in the 1974 version. The ways in which humans deal with death are also at the focus of this play, as are the futility and nihilism some encounter when confronted with imminent mortality. Similar ideas are found in Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night", which Williams excerpted and added as an epigraph to his 1974 version. These lines are appropriate, as Thomas wrote the poem to his own dying father. Additionally, in one of his many drafts, in a footnote on Big Daddy's action in the third act, Williams deems "Cat on a Hot
Do not go gentle into that good night the last line of the second and fourth stanzas, and the third line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas. The rhyme-and-refrain pattern of the villanelle can be schematized as AbA abA abA abA abA abAA where letters ("a" and "b") indicate the two rhyme sounds, upper case indicates a refrain ("A"), and superscript numerals ( and ) indicate Refrain 1 and Refrain 2. The pattern is below set against the poem: Do not go gentle into that good night "Do not go gentle into that good night" is a poem in