In what ways does "Do Not Go Gentle Into This Good Night" affect the reader?I specifically am interested in learning about the affect Thomas wanted...

It is apparent that Dylan Thomas does, indeed, wish his
readers to be affected by his words.  For, there is strong encouragement to not accept
death; the poet calls all to rage against death and not be complaisant when it bids
them.  So vehement is this urging that this villanelle is written in the imperative mood
with words of strong intent.  For instance, the very first stanza states that old age
should fight death all the way to the end--

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Old age should burn and rage at close of
death

Rage, rage against the
dying of the light.

Thomas
supports his contention that all should not die without a fight against the end by
citing what "wise men," "good men," and "wild men" do when faced with death.  With light
images, Thomas exhorts his readers to fight for the "lightning," the sun in flight," and
the "blinding sight of meteors."  Not until the last flicker of life, the last flicker
of the dying of the life, should people not rage against death, although it is a "good
death" in the romantic sense of rest and peaceful
darkness.

In his essay entitled "Do Not Go Gentle Into the
Night," Jhan Hochman discusses the pardoxical question, "Why rage against what is
"good"?  He proposes that the advice of the poet is given for the benefit of Thomas
himself rather than for his father (Thomas never sent the poem to him).  Thus, the word
gentle may refer to his father.

Thus,
concludes Hochman, "Do Not Go Gentle Into the Night" is a poem of paralysis and pain. 
His answer to"Why rage against what is good, what cannot be avoided--death--"is that by
struggling, by raging, the dying demonstrate their love of those who will be left
behind.  This, contends Hochman, is "the kind of demonstration that Thomas wants so
desperately from his father."