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Overview
Walt Whitman wrote “O Captain! My Captain!” in 1865, at the end of the Civil War
. Whitman presents the United States as a ship that’s finally sailing back into its home port after a long and dangerous ocean voyage. But even as exulting crowds celebrate the ship’s return, the speaker mourns the death of his captain—a symbolic stand-in for President Abraham Lincoln, who was assassinated five days after the Confederacy’s surrender. Whitman’s elegy for Lincoln was revived in the 20th century after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and it also made a famous appearance in the 1989 film Dead Poets Society.Read a summary & analysis, an analysis of the speaker, and explanations of important quotes from “O Captain! My Captain!”
