精品文档，仅供学习与交流，如有侵权请联系网站删除The analysis of O Captain! My Captain!”AbstactO Captain! My Captain is a moving poem in which Whitman expresses his profound sense of grief at a tragic end of a leader of men is addressed to Abraham Lincoln, one of the greatest presidents of the United States of America, who fought a war (the American Civil War) against the Southern States to give the Negro slaves freedom and human dignity. The war was won, the slaves were freed, but Lincoln, soon after his election as president for a second term, became a victim to an assassins bullet.Key words captain sorrow admirationThe main ideaWhen President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, a war-weary nation was plunged into shock. The last great battles of the Civil War were still a recent memory, and the murder of the president seemed to be a bloody, pointless coda to four years of conflict and instability. There was a great outpouring of grief across the country, and poems and songs were written to mourn the nations loss. One American who grieved for the fallen president was the poet Walt Whitman.O Captain! My Captain!” This poem was written by Walt Whitman after Abraham Lincolns assassination to honor the death of him. He appreciated Abraham Lincoln and was frustrated by his death. In the poem, poet used the captain “to symbolize Lincoln and the United States of America is represented by the “ship. The leader is being conceived as the brave captain of a ship who falls dead on the deck just when the journey is over and the victory is won. Whitman delivers the message to the captain and declares that their fearful and dangerous trip is done. The ship has experienced severe obstacles such as the Civil War. Finally under the lead of Abraham Lincoln, the unions won the war and abolished the slavery. When everything is over, there is peace. However, the captain was dead at the sea, so the speaker felt bittersweet about the victory.My understandingThe whole poem contains three stanzas, to express the poets love and deep mourning for President Lincoln gradually, and the emotion of the poet was more and more strong. In the poem, the United States is symbolized by a ship and Lincoln by a captain , the military war between federal government and the southern rebels led by Lincoln was described as a spent all the risks and difficult voyage . Here with the symbolism, the readers cannot help imagining that how the captain Lincoln led the federal government to win the civil war, after a violent battle. In view of this, the poet admired the Lincolns achievements and expressed his of love for him.The poem begins with an image of a ship returning safely to the port. The poet imagines a narrator who has accompanied captain all the time. Crying for his captain, the narrator realizes that the captain has died at the sea. The onlookers on shore celebrate the ships safe return, but the narrator mourns the death of his captain. As the voyage ends, so does the captains life. In O Captain! My Captain! there is the representation of a wide range of emotions from joy to sorrow. The poem begins with the narrator feeling overjoyed because the fearful trip is done. The words like prize,won,bells and people all exulting give the reader a feeling of excitement and accomplishment. Soon, the mood shifted from enthusiasm to sorrow once the narrator realizes that the Captain is dead. The words such as pale and still, no pulse nor will” generally have the feeling of sorrow.Read the whole poem, we can find that the first line of each of the three stanzas begins with captain, and the stanza ends with fallen cold and dead”. The purpose of the poet beginning with captain is to remind the reader that the focus remains on the captain and nothing else, while the purpose of placing fallen cold and dead” at the end is to, at first, to inform the reader of what is to come, while later its purpose is to simply to remind the reader of the tragedy.The writing devicesMetaphor: In the poem, Lincoln was compared as the captain and is the main metaphor. This can remind us that Lincoln, as the leader, made his best to win the war and abolish the slavery, which gave us an impression of a greatest president. In the second stanza, poet referred Lincoln as my dear father to show his intense admiration for him. On the other hand, the poet compared Lincoln with George Washington, father of America, who gave birth to America, while Lincoln gave rebirth to the state. This also describes a president to us, who is close with his solders and nations.Repetition: In the first stanza, the poet read, O heart! Heart! Heart! We can understand the sorrow of the narrator when he realized that the captain has dead on the sea. In the second stanza, the poet use more imagines to describe peoples welcome to the captain. By using repetition, the poet showed us a grand ceremony to the victory, then, poet turned to refer the dea