Matched

The two poems that Cassia’s grandfather gifts her are a symbol of knowledge and enlightenment. They represent everything that Cassia has been deprived of in the heavily censored and controlled society in which she lives. At Grandfather’s Final Banquet, he gives Cassia “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night” by Dylan Thomas and “Crossing the Bar” by Alfred Lord Tennyson. For decades, he has kept them secretly hidden in his wife’s compact—which was passed down to Cassia. Grandfather tells Cassia that she will eventually understand what they mean. Although she has to incinerate the poems shortly after reading them, she takes great pains to remember their words, particularly those of the Dylan Thomas poem.

Once Cassia is exposed to illegal poetry, she craves more. The poems awaken her to her plight—and that of others. She repeatedly thinks “do not go gentle” (97) as she vows to fight for what she wants and is inspired to write. Ky gifts her a verse from another Dylan Thomas poem that he purchased on the black market, and Cassia is resolved to one day “share the poems” (272). At the end of Matched, she begins writing her own words. Although she has to destroy them, she hopes she can eventually share them with Ky, and “they will change from ash and nothing into flesh and blood” (366).