Summary Of The Poem O Captain My Captain

O Captain! My Captain! was written in 1865 by Walt Whitman. Walt Whitman was born in 1819 and passed away in 1892. The year 1865 was significant for America, it was the year that the Civil War ended and the year that the president was assassinated. Whitman was a huge fan of President Lincoln and when he learned that he was assassinated, he took his death hard (Hochman, Jhan). The speaker of the poem is the sailor on the ship. He is the narrator because it is told from his point of view. O Captain! My Captain! takes places on a ship that is returning from winning a battle. The ship is almost back to the harbor when the sailor finds the captain cold and dead. The poem’s central problem occurs when the sailor finds the captain laying there cold and dead. This is signifiant because it is repeated throughout the poem several times. The end is resolved when the sailor realizes that he is in charge now and has to be the one to share the news of the captain’s death. There is also an emotional conflict that the the sailor faces internally. He is conflicted with wanting to celebrate the victory they just had and mourning the loss of his captain. At the beginning of the poem …show more content…
My Captain! has a lot of rhymes and repetition. That line O Captain! my Captain! is repeated at the beginning of each stanza. This refers to the captain that the sailor just found dead. At the end of each stanza the speaker says “Fallen cold and dead.” This is repeated throughout the poem because it the theme of the poem. In line five, there is an emphasis placed on heart because it is repeated three times. The second to last line of each stanza mentions a deck that the dead captain lays on. Line 2 of stanza two repeats ‘for you’ twice. This is the narrator talking to the dead captain. Not all the end rhymes in this poem are perfect, they still rhyme, but are considered slant rhymes. Line six and seven end in ‘red’ and ‘dead.’ They are considered slant rhymes because they sound like they