TOW #19 "O Captain! My Captain!"

     Reading goal: Read something different than you have before (I choose a poem. I have never analysed a poem for a TOW before, and often find poetry challenging to understand and analyze.)
    Writing goal: Connect each point back to the thesis.

        Literally only days after the end of the civil came to a close, President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater. It was truly a tragedy, for in the aftermath of the war, the country was in physical, social, and political shambles and desperately needed Lincoln's strong leadership to keep the union united. Walt Whitman, a prominent poet of the era, recognized the full extent of this tragedy. In his poem "O Captain! My Captain!", Whitman uses an extended metaphor and repetition to illustrate the enormity of the loss of Abraham Lincoln.

            Throughout the poem Whitman does not directly mention Lincoln or the assassination, but instead uses an extended metaphor to describe the tragedy. He describes a boat, that having weathered many storms, finally emerged victorious, only to find the Captain dead on the deck (lines 2-10). Whitman is alluding to Lincoln and the war, equating Lincoln to the Captain, and the ship to the Union. He demonstrates that just as a ship is lost without her captain, the United States will be lost without Lincoln.  By using this metaphor, Whitman relays just how crucial Lincoln is to the country and helps the audience comprehend the true extent of Lincoln's loss.

            Whitman reiterates this loss through the use of repetition. Though he discusses the American people celebrating the war's end, he abruptly reminds them of the loss by ending each stanza by describing Lincoln's death with the line "fallen cold and dead." The simple syntax of the phrase illustrates that there is no way to sugarcoat such a horrible event. The line is repeated three times throughout the poem, making the vivid imagery of Lincoln "fallen cold and dead" stick in the mind of the reader, most likely intended to generate an emotional response in the people. The repetition of this gruesome line reminds the reader that Lincoln's death was a monumental loss that will not easily be forgotten.

            President Abraham Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated, and his murder shocked and appalled many Americans, especially Northern Republicans. Whitman was among them, and described the profound loss of the President in his poem through the use of metaphor and repetition. On the other hand, many Democratic Southerners rejoiced at the death of Republican Lincoln, for they did not have the hindsight that Whitman had in recognizing that the country would struggle in the absence of Lincoln's leadership. As weak-leader VP Johnson and anti-South Congress took over Reconstruction the South would come to recognize the true tragedy in the absence of Abraham Lincoln that Whitman describes in "O Captain! My Captain!".

The Poem:

1 O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!	5
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;	10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,	15
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;	20
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.