Analysis Of The Poem O Captain My Captain

In every piece of writing, an author or poet has certain way of writing things. By using techniques like imagery, figurative language, and diction an author/ poet can express their ideas in a unique way. Every person has a way of writing and what they are comfortable doing. It depends on a person’s strengths using these techniques too. One other thing that might affect one’s writing is the experiences a person has lived through. A tragic and influential time in a person’s life might cause them to have a darker view on life, resulting in dark and gloomy writing. While on the other hand if good things happen and everything is going the author/poets way, their writing most likely will be joyful and light. Sometimes authors and poet write both

My Captain!” clearly displays how much emotion he as along with the strategies he uses to create the poem and shows what he is trying to portray. First, before even reading the first line, the title exhibits a great deal of emotion by having and explanation points and “O”, showing the weeping noise of someone that is morning. Moving on to the structure of the poem, it is a free verse poem with six stanzas with four lines in each stanza. After then reading the poem, a rhyme scheme throughout the whole poem can’t be found, but there are rhyming words and slant rhymes hinted throughout the poem, for example “hear” and “near” on line number 3. Why Whitman did this is because it is bring a light sense of feeling and makes it more appealing to hear. Along with a rhythm of twelve to thirteen syllables in every line in all odd stanzas and then in all the even stanzas it goes 5, 7, 8, 5 syllables. It makes the poem more smooth that is what Walt Whitman it trying to show. Lines 17-20 are different from the whole poem and can also be looked at as two heroic couplets that have iambic meter have a definite rhyme scheme of aabb, then it goes back to a undefined rhyme scheme a no certain meter. He also breaks up his thoughts and ideas by using commas and dashes, showing the style that he writes in not a narrative, it focuses more on his thoughts as they come out. The part of the poem that clearly shows Whitman’s style is through his figurative language and imagery.

The poem is another free verse and is only one long stanza and one sentence. Looking more into the poem, unlike “O Captain! My Captain!”, this poem does not have a certain rhyme scheme or rhythm, instead he uses diction to show the audience what he is trying to portray. The words that he chooses are upbeat and are positive. This poem uses figurative language and vivid imagery to show what he is thinking. The poem first starts off by exclaiming “[The speaker] hear[s] America singing”, or in other words he hears the American people singing (1). Then he goes on to give examples of all the types of people and things that are singing. The first example that is given is personification, he describes that the machines are singing strongly and happily the way they are supposed to. Then, Whitman goes on to descried the people that are singing, like a “carpenter singing as he measures his plank or beam” and a “shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench” (3,7). The examples he gives show vivid imagery truly show his style because many poets would have the reader think what they are trying to say, but Walt Whitman wants to show clearly all of his thoughts. After giving a long list of examples of types of people who are singing, he begins to conclude by emphasizing that everyone is “singing what belongs to him or her” and to no one else (12). What Whitman means is, even though everyone is