Walt Whitman's O Captain ! My Captain

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Walt Whitman wrote many great poems, yet while I read through a list of poems to analyze, one of his most popular poems caught my eye. “O Captain! My Captain!” has so many hidden meanings, as well as sentence structure and imagery. This twenty-four line piece of literary art has made its mark on history by describing the feeling of losing a friend, as well as a leader. This work is a great poem to expose readers to exploring the depths of the words written to interpret the hidden messages among them.
The true meaning behind this poem was for Whitman to express his admiration for President Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated twenty-one years before it was written. Whitman wanted to pay tribute by creating an ode to the late President. After …show more content…

The ship is quite weathered, but she has pulled through the rough weather. This means that even though the ship was battered, the Captain kept his crew together in rough circumstances. In lines three and four, the people are cheering for the captain who somewhat gave his life to keep America together. In line five the repetition of “heart” shows a crew member’s deep sorrow that a man he admired is now dead on the deck. The following quote from the poem solidifies the assumption that the Captain has perished: “O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead” …show more content…

Although the Captain is gone, the crew and ship are safe, so the Captain did, in fact, do what he was tasked with doing. Yet again, in the last three lines, the crew member, while in a celebratory parade into port still remembers that his fallen captain is still lying on the deck. Now that I think about it another potential meaning behind this poem could be that Whitman is trying to show that there is no absolute victory in a war. In every war, each side loses in a way. That really can put life into perspective; no matter how great the victory there is always going to be losses in any struggle. Maybe that “Captain” is just an intangible idea like for example the morality of a person. For example, imagine if a thief stole a purse, then he should technically lose some morality if there is a celestial

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