O Captain My Captain Poem Analysis

The poem “O Captain! My Captain!” by Walt Whitman is about a captain that is lying dead on the floor of the ship. The ship is returning home while the people on the shore are celebrating the return. The speaker is a shipmate and cannot celebrate the return of the trip because he is grieving the loss of his captain. Whitman wrote this poem after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln shortly after the Civil War. The poem consists of many metaphors, imagery, figurative and literal language, symbolism, personification, alliteration, repetition, rhyme scheme, apostrophe, allusion, diction, and tone.
“O Captain! My Captain!” is composed of many metaphors. A metaphor is a statement that one thing is something else, which, in literal sense, it is not. President Lincoln is the captain who has “fallen cold and dead,” after being assassinated shortly after the Civil War. The “fearful trip” is the Civil War and “the prize we sought” is the preservation of the Union. The “ship” is the United States of America. The metaphors used created imagery as the poem went on.
Imagery branches off of the metaphors used in “O Captain! My Captain!” Imagery is the way an author sets a …show more content…
My Captain!” also. Symbolism is a person, place, or thing in a narrative poem that suggests meanings beyond its literal sense and can usually have multiple meanings. The ship has “weather’d” a rough storm out at sea meant that the United States of America went through some rough stuff while fighting the Civil War. Whitman used President Lincoln as a symbol of any average American that was capable of becoming a great leader. The shores were a symbol of the crowds that welcomed the ship home while the crowds symbolized the American population as a whole. The “ship” symbolized the United States of America. The “trip” and “voyage” symbolized the Civil War. The “port” symbolized the victory of the war. The “prize” symbolized the preservation of the United States of