19 pages • 38 minutes read
O Captain! My Captain!
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Themes
The End of War
“O Captain!” cannot be fully appreciated without understanding its context as a poem in celebration of the end of the American Civil War and in mourning over the death of Lincoln. The poem uses generalized imagery of celebration to express the feeling of glee as the war ends; however, on a personal level, the speaker feels he cannot participate in the celebration because he mourns the loss of his captain.
Many people across the north would have shared this feeling of competing emotions, but it was particularly powerful for Whitman who both detested war and loved Lincoln. His four poems written after Lincoln’s death (linked in the Further Reading and Resources section of this guide) show the depth of his mourning.
Though Whitman authored the poem in response to the end of the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination, the competing feelings of joy and sadness can apply to the end of any conflict. At the end of any war, a populace must simultaneously celebrate the end of conflict while commemorating and mourning the dead. These contrasting feelings can create great strife and imbalance in people’s hearts and minds, and Whitman centers on that imbalance in his poem. This comes through in the subject matter, the imagery, and the structure of the poem. Each stanza contains positive and negative imagery—imagery of both security and joy and of loss and grief. The poem says that one cannot exist with the other when coming out of a great conflict full of death and sacrifice.
In this sense, the poem acts as both elegy and celebration, though because the focus of the poem is on the dead captain, the feeling of loss is stronger than the feeling of celebration. Whitman personalizes the loss by writing the poem in the first person and by physically placing the speaker next to the dead captain and away from the crowds celebrating the ship’s return. By doing this, the reader identifies with the loss more than with the celebration, though noting the simultaneous nature of both events is crucial in full analysis of the poem.
Death and Mourning
The speaker of “Oh Captain!” experiences the mourning process in an expedited manner. While recovery after losing a loved one takes a long time, the speaker moves from grief to possible acceptance within three stanzas. Part of this is because the poem intends to express the feeling of Americans after Lincoln’s death, but does not wish to paralyze the nation. In pursuit of this goal, the poem, though sentimental, approaches the situation with a measured tone. The speaker sees and describes scenes of happiness, but he just doesn’t feel ready to join those scenes. This is a much more calculated tone than if the poem denied the positivity of the end of the war. Because of this, the poem features a speaker who, while grieving, still notices the bigger picture.
Throughout the poem, the speaker goes through various stages of mourning. Initially, the poet feels shocked at the captain’s death, expressed in the first stanza when he laments, “[b]ut O heart! heart! heart! / O the bleeding drops of red” (Lines 5-6). This shock turns to a sort of denial and bargaining stage where the speaker implores the dead captain to rise. In fact, the entire second stanza is an address where the speaker talks to the dead captain. This kind of behavior suggests the speaker is in denial that the captain is in fact dead.
The final stanza moves from denial to acceptance as the speaker reports, “My captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still / My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will” (Lines 17-18). This reporting of the captain’s state shows a logical understanding of what has happened as opposed to the denial in the second stanza. Despite this understanding, though, the speaker still mourns at the close of the poem. This stage of grief is both acceptance and depression. The speaker is not past the feelings of grief, but he has accepted the fact of the matter and moved beyond his denial.
Martyrdom and Sacrifice
By juxtaposing celebratory images of flowers, the flag, and music with the images of the captain’s death, the speaker associates the captain’s death with the victory the people are celebrating. And because the ship has safely returned while the captain upon it arrives dead, the speaker implies that the captain sacrificed himself to ensure the ship’s safe return.
Even deeper, the movement from captain to father in the third stanza displays the speaker’s reverence, love, and respect for the captain. In the context of Lincoln’s assassination just days after the end of the war, the depiction of Lincoln as a martyr fits; it is a depiction that has persisted since Lincoln’s death. This poem greatly romanticizes Lincoln’s death, establishing him as a man who gave everything for his country.
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Related Titles
By Walt Whitman
