O Captain! My Captain!

" O Captain! My Captain!" is a poem written by Walt Whitman. It is about the death of the captain and how dear this captain was to the persona. The author is referring to Abraham Lincoln when talking about the captain. The persona is lost without the captain. There are five elements, that determine the poem's purpose and meaning: form, sound, figurative language, imagery, and poetic techniques.

First, the form of this poem is very simple. It consists of three stanzas with eight lines in each stanza. " O Captain! My Captain!" is a lyric poem that expresses the feeling of sadness and grieving for someone's death. The last four lines of each stanza are indented to show the sadness. The form helps connect the poem with the person and his loss of someone who was so meaningful in the narrator's life.

Another poetic element is sound. The sounds heard in this poem are very important. The rhyme scheme is: AABCDEFE, GGHIJEKE, LLMNOEPE. An example of internal rhyme is in line three with the words "The port is near, the bells I hear". Another example of internal rhyme is in line twenty with the words "From fearful trip the victor ship". The rhythm of "O Captain! My Captain!" varies from a medium pace to a slower pace. The rhythm slows down is when the poem gets sadder. The rhythm is consistent throughout each stanza. There is an example of alliteration in line ten, "the flag is flowing". The "f" repeats itself. Another example of alliteration is in line nineteen; the "s" sound is repeated in "safe and sound". There are two examples of repetition in this poem. In lines one and nine, the words ," O Captain! My Captain!" are repeated. In line five, the word heart is repeated in the phrase, "O heart! heart! heart!". This shows the personas despair. Consonance is used in line four where the "r" sound is repeated in the words grim and daring. Another example of consonance in this poem is in line eleven where the "b" sound is repeated in the words bouquets and ribbon'd. Onomatopoeia is used by the author in line ten with the words "bugle trills". This shows the personas grief. All of these sound elements mimic the sounds of what the persona might have heard on the terrible day.

The next poetic element is figurative language. The only major element of figurative language that is meaningful in this poem is a metaphor. This whole poem is actually a metaphor, comparing Abraham Lincoln to a ship's captain. There is not