Poetry is an effective way to relate and influence people. Dangerous Minds shows how the teacher uses poetry to relate to her students. Everyday conflicts such as death, lurks in every corner for these students. In "Do not go gentle into that good night" by Dylan Thomas, is one of the poems the teacher uses to influence her students. The poem shows how a dying man should not die with ease or without a fight. The teacher tells the students that they should not give up on school because doing so will lead to their inevitable deaths. Staying inside school and off the streets is the teacher's way of saving the students and for them to avoid death.
So the parallel to the students is the speaker in the poem telling his father to fight off death, and the movie also makes a parallel to Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man." The conceit is universal.
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