Journey Theme in Whitman’s O Captain! My Captain! and Tennyson’s Crossing the Bar
A man’s journey at sea has always been romanticized as an individualistic struggle against the backdrop of the cruel elements of nature. Paradoxically, though, within that same journey, the sea possesses an innate sense of timelessness that can become a man’s quest for God. In “O Captain! My Captain!” Walt Whitman describes the narrator’s sense of aimlessness at sea after his beloved Captain dies. In Lord Alfred Tennyson’s “Crossing the Bar,” the speaker is beckoned by the sea and its soundlessness even though he senses foredoom there. And so, although both Whitman and Tennyson employ a voyage at sea as the predominant image and metaphor within similar structural frameworks, they do differ in how they represent the journey and depict the tone of the poem.
In “O Captain! My Captain!” uses the ship, the voyage at sea, and the Captain, within the poem to describe the mood of the United States in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. The “fearful” voyage at sea, then, is an appropriate metaphor for the arduous Civil War, which has finally ended, but ironically, the Captain of the ship, Abraham Lincoln, has fallen dead (Line 2). Whitman uses extensive imagery to describe the North, awaiting the ship to dock, “exulting,” and “their eager faces turning” (Whitman, Lines 3, 12). But at the same time, there are underlying burdens of grief that the war brings. Whitman describes the postwar era with a pervading irony within the poem; although “the prize we sought is won,” the true reality of the situation reflects a phyrric victory (Line 2). The narrator’s “mournful tread” on the deck of the ship becomes symbolic for the United States, as the Sout...
... middle of paper ...
...orates the death of the Captain, Tennyson discusses crossing into the realm of the afterlife with a stoic calmness, which ultimately leads a solitary death. However, both poets seem to realize their own mortality and that death is an indestructible force. While Tennyson’s everyday narrator treats “crossing the bar” as another symbolic stage of the human existence, the beloved Captain is ironically unable to defeat it despite what horrors he may have overcome at sea. Death, then, transcends the social divide; no one, from the common man of Tennyson’s poem to a brave, revered Captain, who has survived the perils at sea, can conquer it.
Works Cited
Tennyson, Alfred Lord. Alfred Lord Tennyson: Selected Poems. New York: Penguin
Books , 1992.
Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. 1892 ed. New York: Bantam Books, 1983.
PID 0062
1
Marlow Engl. 12 Sect. 37
The author shows the reader the sea just as the sailor does as death, but more than death
The stock market crash of 1929 is the primary event that led to the collapse of stability in the nation and ultimately paved the road to the Great Depression. The crash was a wide range of causes that varied throughout the prosperous times of the 1920’s. There were consumers buying on margin, too much faith in businesses and government, and most felt there were large expansions in the stock market. Because of all these...
The juxtaposition of the Titanic and the environment in the first five stanzas symbolizes the opposition between man and nature, suggesting that nature overcomes man. The speaker characterizes the sea as being “deep from human vanity” (2) and deep from the “Pride of Life that planned” the Titanic. The diction of “human vanity” (2) suggests that the sea is incorruptible by men and then the speaker’s juxtaposition of vanity with “the
Some of the most intriguing stories of today are about people’s adventures at sea and the thrill and treachery of living through its perilous storms and disasters. Two very popular selections about the sea and its terrors are The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger and “The Wreck of the Hesperus” by Henry Longfellow. Comparison between the two works determines that “The Wreck of the Hesperus” tells a more powerful sea-disaster story for several different reasons. The poem is more descriptive and suspenseful than The Perfect Storm, and it also plays on a very powerful tool to captivate the reader’s emotion. These key aspects combine to give the reader something tangible that allows them to relate to the story being told and affects them strongly.
Odysseus returns from a great victory of the Trojan War and the enormous amount of pride he gains gets him into a lot of trouble. As he returns home, he lands on the island of the Kyklopes. He insists that they meet with the unknown host, with the prospect of receiving gifts. His pride and craving for more treasure leads him and his men into trouble. They get trapped in the cave of the Kyklops and uses his wit to escape. He spoils the victorious moment when he taunts at Polyphemos. He taunts, “Kyklops, if ever mortal man inquire how you were put to shame and blinded, tell him Odysseus, raider of cities, took your eye: Laertes son, whose home’s on Ithaka!" (IX, lines 548-552). Not only did Odysseus...
There is no doubt that the stock market crash contributed to the great depression, but how? One way that the Crash contributed to the depression was the loss of money it caused to the average man. It is believed that in the first day of the crash almost a billion dollars were lost, this took a large amount out of the pocket of the common man. Without this money people were unable to purchase consumer goods, which the United States economy was based on. Another way the Crash contributed to the depression was the loss of confidence in the market. When t...
The Seafarer highlites the transience of wordly joys which are so little important and the fact thet we have no power in comparison to God.
October 29th, 1929 marked the beginning of the Great Depression, a depression that forever changed the United States of America. The Stock Market collapse was unavoidable considering the lavish life style of the 1920’s. Some of the ominous signs leading up to the crash was that there was a high unemployment rate, automobile sales were down, and many farms were failing. Consumerism played a key role in the Stock Market Crash of 1929 because Americans speculated on the stocks hoping they would grow in their favor. They would invest in these stocks at a low rate which gave them a false sense of wealth causing them to invest in even more stocks at the same low rate. When they purchased these stocks at this low rate they never made enough money to pay it all back, therefore contributing to the crash of 1929. Also contributing to the crash was the over production of consumer goods. When companies began to mass produce goods they did not not need as many workers so they fired them. Even though there was an abundance of goods mass produced and at a cheap price because of that, so many people now had no jobs so the goods were not being purchased. Even though, from 1920 to 1929, consumerism and overproduction partially caused the Great Depression, the unequal distribution of wealth and income was the most significant catalyst.
Economic historians usually consider that the start of depression is the sudden collapse of US stock markets on October 29, also known as Black Tuesday. And among the problems involved in assesing the causes of depression none is more intractable than the responsibility to be assigned to the stock market crash. The rise of mass unemployment is considered as a result of the crash, however the crash is not the sole event that caused the depression. The Wall Street Crash is usually seen as having the greatest impact on the events that followed and consequently is widely accepted as pointing the devastating economic circumstances that led to the Great Depression. True or not, the consequences were terrible for almost everybody. Most academic experts agree on one aspect of the crash: Billions of dollars of wealth vanished in one day, and this immediately depressed consumption.
Our modern world is full of diseases that are often incurable, making people’s life a living torment, stealing the sense of living and encouraging a person to give up on everything. Even though the medical advances that are offered today are being developed to save a patient’s life or relieve their pain they fail to do so. There is a controversy between two groups those who believe euthanasia should be allowed and those who strongly believe it should be prohibited. Those against euthanasia see a doctor who performs it as a murderer, their believe’s foundation is that there is nobody else other than god who should end a life. ““eu” means good and “thanathous” means death” (Boudreau, et al. 2) Physicians should be allowed by law to prescribe
Bullying has both short term and long effects on the victim. A victim of someone who has been bullied for so long can lead to them bullying other individuals, making this a never-ending cycle. "Bu...
Symbolism was used to express the Captains minds set. In the beginning paragraphs, the Captain is viewed as depressed, apprehensive, and insecure. The Captain viewed the land as insecure, whereas the sea was stable. The Captain was secure with the sea, and wished he were more like it.
Walt Whitman was a man that served as a nurse helping wounded soldiers in the Civil War. While he was there, he took what he saw and wrote them in his poems. Every aspect of each poem related to the time that he was in and he wrote about every experience and feeling he had about what he saw. Whitman had three themes that he used to focus all of his poems on and these themes were individuality, democracy, and freedom. With writing with these themes, Whitman could make an impact on what the reader imagined in their head while reading and he was also able to convey a certain feeling through his poems that he wanted the reader to feel. Whitman had a unique style of writing, which was free verse. Through free verse, Whitman could direct and write a poem in a way that he liked and in a way where he was able to give more detail rather than writing in a rhythmic way. Through Walt Whitman’s themes of individuality, democracy, and freedom, Whitman was able to express his feelings about war and leaders in the poems that he wrote during the Civil War time.
...es out of mercy. Beauchamp puts it eloquently when he says “From a moral point of view, causing a person’s death is wrong when it is wrong not because the death is intended or because it is caused, but because an unjustified harm or loss to the person occurs” (Beauchamp, 76).
Fear has taken a hold of every man aboard this ship, as it should; our luck is as far gone as the winds that led us off course. For nights and days gusts beyond measure have forced us south, yet our vessel beauty, Le Serpent, stays afloat. The souls aboard her, lay at the mercy of this ruthless sea. Chaotic weather has turned the crew from noble seamen searching for glory and riches, to whimpering children. To stay sane I keep the holy trinity close to my heart and the lady on my mind. Desperation comes and goes from the men’s eyes, while the black, blistering clouds fasten above us, as endless as the ocean itself. The sea rocks our wood hull back and forth but has yet to flip her. The rocking forces our bodies to cling to any sturdy or available hinge, nook or rope, anything a man can grasp with a sea soaked hand. The impacts make every step a danger. We all have taken on a ghoulish complexion; the absence of sunlight led the weak souls aboard to fight sleep until sick. Some of us pray for the sun to rise but thunder constantly deafens our cries as it crackles above the mast. We have been out to sea for fifty-five days and we have been in this forsaken storm for the last seventeen.