Walt Whitman

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Recommended: O captain! my captain! poem analysis

Poems are used to convey a strong message to the audience and reader. These poems conveyed the theme of sorrowness and death. An example of sorrowness in Walt Whitmans “O Captain! My Captain” is “Where on the deck my Captain lies / fallen cold and dead”(7-8), which means that the president is laying fallen and dead after the homecoming of the ship. An example of sorrowness in W.H. Auden’s “Elegy for JFK” is.“When a just man dies / lamentation and praise / sorrow and joy are one”(13-15). This quote is saying that when the president, John F. Kennedy, died there was sorrowness as well as joy and praise. The poems “Elegy for JFK” and “O Captain! My Captain!” conveyed the theme of sorrow by using figurative language such as metaphors, rhyming, and over exaggeration.
In both of the poems they talk about how one man has such an impact on our country. For example in Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” it says, “for you the flag is flung, for you the …show more content…

My Captain!” and W.H. Auden's “Elegy for JFK” is the rhyme scheme and sound devices used to convey the theme of sorrow. In Whitman's “O Captain! My Captain!” there are 24 lines and 3 stanzas total. In Auden's “Elegy for JFK” there are 15 lines and 5 stanzas yet the same theme is conveyed in both poems. The difference is rhyme scheme and length of the two poems is not an immense difference but it goes to show how different word choice can affect how the message is conveyed and in what amount of time it gets conveyed. For example in Whitman's “O Captain! My Captain!” it says, “For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths-for you the shores a-crowding”(11), which means they mourned with bouquets and ribbon wreaths as everyone gathers at shore. In Auden's “Elegy for JFK” it says, “the heavens are silent”(6). This is saying that for his death all goes silent in mourning. These quotes provide evidence that the same message can be conveyed in a different way using selective word

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