"O Captain! My Captain!" is different, however. Whitman has been called “the father of free verse,” a style that refuses regular meter and rhyme scheme. Here, the speaker’s inner thoughts set him apart from the crowd. While the War claimed many lives, it led to the reunification of the Union, so many Americans felt similarly divided. Struggles to balance his personal feelings of loss with the celebratory mood following the successful voyage: The last lines read, “Exult O shores, and ring O bells! / But I with mournful tread / Walk the deck my Captain lies, / Fallen cold and dead.” Whitman's poetry places a lot of emphasis on the individual. Everyone adored the captain, and the speaker admits that his death feels like a horrible dream. In the first line of this stanza, the speaker implores the Captain to "rise up and hear the bells," wishing the dead man could witness the people’s elation. In the second stanza, the speaker reveals that his Captain's dead body is lying on the deck. The ship represents the war-weathered nation following the Civil War and the “prize won” is the salvaged Union. The first lines express a celebratory spirit: “O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, the ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won.” The speaker then notes the cheering crowds. Juxtaposing relief and despair, the poem addresses both the Union victory and the uncertainty which would follow. The “Captain” represents Lincoln and the poem itself is an extended metaphor memorializing his Presidency and the Civil War. Whitman wrote this poem shortly after President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. The poem can be classified as an “elegy,” an expression of sorrow or a lamentation for the dead. The speaker of the poem is one of the sailors who celebrates the safe and successful return of the ship and mourns the loss of his great leader. Walt Whitman’s “O Captain, My Captain!” is a poem to a recently deceased ship captain.
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