Exploring Themes of "O Captain! My Captain"
Walt Whitman was an exciting poet who lived between the years of 1819-1892. Whitman attended a public school in Brooklyn for six years before he began labor work at age eleven, and quit his formal education. Whitman's most famous work is Leaves of Grass, which is a volume of twelve poems. He began writing this compendium of poems, and he didn't publish the collection of poems until 1855. Whitman is considered a true American poet because he believes an ideal poet is one whose "spirit responds to his country's spirit" (Aubrey 2086). The true American poet must take on both the old and new ideas of poetry. Whitman wrote many great poems, including "O Captain! My Captain." This is one of four poems in "Memories of President Lincoln" a section in Whitman's collection of poems, Leaves of Grass. In "O Captain! My Captain," Walt Whitman examines many different themes including loyalty, coming of age, and death. Walt Whitman explores the theme of loyalt
Another commentary from Poetry for Students says:When this is contrasted with the great success of the voyage, introduced early in the poem, the death is made even more shocking. Hochman addresses Whitman's desire to build national solidarity:The transition from totalizing self that attempts to merge with the world to a privileged self, came about because Whitman realized that Lincoln, with presidency and dying, did for the country what Whitman had wanted to do with poetry: Maintain the Union. Along with loyalty, Whitman also expresses the theme of his coming of age throughout the poem. " In this poem, Whitman shows an amazing example of loyalty by the difficulties that Lincoln and Whitman both went through and yet neither crashed nor gave up. Whitman uses the word 'my' many times throughout the poem to symbolize a personal loss and loneliness that he must overcome and grow from. Lincoln accomplished this, however, not with rousing poems but with presidential acts and proclamation and with the supreme sacrifice that also served to unite the country. One commentary states, "The sort of loyalty described in this poem does not come from observing the world passively: it grows out dealing with one disappointment after another and finally finding one's ideal turned into reality" (O Captain! 149). (2-3) Whitman uses many examples in not only "O Captain! My Captain," but many other works to explore the topic of loyalty. In the poem, Whitman pays tribute to Lincoln ands "shows more fierce loyalty than could ever be expected from actual ship's crew or actual sons; it is loyalty that does show itself sometimes in political followers" ("O Captain!" 148). He can no longer take orders and longer has a parent figure whose judgment he can trust. ("O Captain!" 149)These are only a few examples of how Whitman discusses his coming age throughout "O Captain! My Captain. More pressing than the irony or the pity of death at the moment of success is that the speaker is thinking about himself and what the future will hold for him. ("O Captain!" 149)Another aspect that is used in the poem to portray his coming of age is the mentioning of the dead body, which is used to try and force himself to believe it. He has to be responsible for himself.
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