POEM’S TEXT:

O Captain! My Captain!
BY WALT WHITMAN
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Analysis:
https://youtu.be/IzZ5NJyZ16I?si=g0kWn33yN9nMc8rm

DEAD POET’S SOCIETY:

https://youtu.be/j64SctPKmqk?si=J8FDLD0VQg2AeFmj

ANALYSIS:
 The poem is divided in 3 stanzas
 It follows the metric of the BALLAD:
At the end of every stanza the CHORUS is repeated: “O Captain, my
Captain”.
 It’s an elegy: a poem to celebrate people who have died.
What is the poem about?
Link to the secession war:
1865, WHITMAN
“O CAPTAIN, MY CAPTAIN”
The poem is a metaphor: it represents the end of the American civil war.
The war was won by the North. So: the people are cheering for the
victory.
The captain is the American president, Abraham Lincoln, who was
assassinated in 1965.
(“Fallen cold and dead”)
The ship represents America.
The ship returning victorious represents the victory of the North
(“the prize we sought is won”)
And the people on the deck, are cheering for the victory:
(“The bells I hear, the people all exulting”
“For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-
crowding”)
The message: the North wins the war, but this costs them the loss of the
President.

Link to “Dead poets’ society”:

commits suicide, because his parents didn’t want his to follow his dreams
of studying theatre.
So the professor is sent away, because he was accused of having to do
with the death of the student. And also, his unconventional ways of
teaching., that weren’t liked by the school.

The students dedicate the poem to their “dead captain”. The teacher, who
taught them how to view literature in a different and more exciting way,
was fired from the school, because he was too much of a non-conformer.
So, in a sense, he plays the role of the Captain of the ship of Whitman’s
poem.
Debate on the poems they read.