Warm lips are red, blood drops are too, Abe Lincoln was shot, the nation was blue. In the poem" O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman, the color red is used as a symbol for many objects. Red symbolizes blood shed, life, happiness and it also associates with love, life, and vitality. Other things that can relate to red are compassion, hatred, and pain. These elements are what gives the poem its voice and tone in a metaphoric way. The writer purposely uses
Throughout the poem, even though there is no repetition of the word red, it can be related to many other elements in the poem, such as "death". The phrase "fallen cold and dead" repeated at the end of each stanza emphasizes on the death of the captain and how red or "blood" can be
used to relate to it. Also red indicates blood that was shed when Lincoln was assassinated. The clever use of the rhyme scheme, red, head, and dead, gives the reader a clear and detailed enough picture of how the president died. Ironically red can be used to symbolize brightness or life and it can also be used to symbolize death, and blood. "The vessel grim and daring" vessel has a double meaning in this phrase. It can be used to define the ship or a blood vessel, again "red". "Grim and daring" gives the reader a sense that the trip no longer seems 'bright' anymore. The word "grim" gives the phrase a different taste. It makes the "vessel" seem lifeless and no longer bright, which can also mean that life has been taken away.
"My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still" this phrase clearly shows that there is no longer life. Pale can represent the synonyms cold, dead, and lifeless. When lips are warm, it has a nice shade of "red" to it, meaning life. When it is pale, it means that there is no longer life, that life has been drained away. The color red is striking to the eye and the mind. The speaker's purpose of this word choice is so that this word will not be left unheeded, that it wi
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