Write the critical appreciation entitled O Captain! My Captain!

Ans.

Introduction

O Captain! My Captain! is one of the most popular poems of Walt Whitman a great American poet. It was published in 1865. The poem is written to mourn the ultimately assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of America, at the hands of actor, John Wilkies Booth. Lincoln waged a war, known as Civil War, against the Southern States to keep the unity and integrity of the United States of America and to abolish slavery. He came out successfully of this struggle and achieved his goal. But alas, when his people were preparing to give him a warm welcome, he was assassinated. This poem expresses profound grief at the death of Lincoln whom he addresses as the Captain of the ship of United States of America.

Thought-content

The poet is much shocked after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth President of America. He captained the ship of his country. He got success in Civil War and also succeeded in abolishing the slavery of Negroes. The whole country enjoyed this victory. They admired the duty of their President. But none could challenge fate. He could not participate the rejoicing of his countrymen. He was assassinated by his own country man, John Wilkes Booth.

Pathos in the Poem

Abraham Lincoln could bring the dangerous and bloody Civil War to a successful conclusion and thus saved his country from disintegration. But hardly a year later, he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. The entire nation was plunged in mourning. The poet felt it was a personal loss. This account for the poignancy and intensity of his grief in all of his four elegies on the death of the President. This poem is the cry of the poet’s broken heart, and so it goes straight to the heart of his readers. In the death of Lincoln, the poet finds the symbol for the suffering and death of so many soldiers.

Form, Style and Language of the Poem

The poem is an elegy which mourns the death of Abraham Lincoln. Whitman has generally been regarded as a formless poet who did not organize his material into any conventional pattern. But O Captain! My Captain! is not a formless poem: as a matter of fact it is his best poem in rhyme and near regular meter. It is a poem in three stanzas of eight lines each, each stanza having a regular rhyme-pattern. The poem is not merely in very definite stanza form, but actually of the eight lines of its stanzas all but two rhymes. Still somehow. the poem, though not a failure, scarcely shows Whitman at his best, in spite of its subject and its evident sincerity. For one thing it contains a deplorable piece of reporter’s language-“for you bouquets and ribbon’d wreath.” Certainly the internal rhymes in which he has indulged, do not come very happily off.

The poem is rich in figures of speech and poetic imagery. There is a sustained metaphor in the whole poem Lincoln being the Captain, America, the ship and Civil War, the storm. There is frequent use of Apostrophe:

1. “O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done.”

2. “But O heart! heart! heart!”

3. “O Captain! my captain! rise up and hear the bells.”

4. “Here Captain! dear father!”

The language of the poem is refined. It has a grand poetic style. In spite of being a poem of personal interest, it has a universal appeal.