O Captain! My Captain!: Themes

The Costs of Victory

The scene narrated in “O Captain! My Captain!” plays out against a backdrop of conflicting moods, as a ship sails back into its home port after a long and perilous ocean voyage. On the one hand, the poem is flooded with the jubilant celebration of crowds gathered along the shore, ringing their bells and blaring their bugles. On the other hand, the poem’s speaker is on the deck of the ship cradling the head of his beloved captain, who has died before he could revel in his successful homecoming. These conflicting moods of celebration and mourning could be read simply as the product of unfortunate circumstances related to the captain’s tragic and untimely death. However, it’s important to remember that the poem’s central scenario is an extended metaphor for the United States at the end of the Civil War. The captain is therefore a stand-in for President Abraham Lincoln, who led the Northern states to victory over the Confederacy, but then was assassinated before the passions of war could cool. In this way, the captain’s death isn’t just untimely; it also reflects Lincoln’s own death, which Whitman presents as one of the tragic costs of victory.

Grief and the Challenge of Accepting Loss

The poem follows the speaker as he passes through three of the key stages of grief: shock, denial, and acceptance. In the first stanza, Whitman juxtaposes the crowd’s celebratory atmosphere with the speaker’s mournful attitude. The starkness of this contrast becomes especially pronounced when the speaker interrupts his description of jubilant crowds with his pained cry: “O heart! heart! heart!” (line 5). Evidently, his captain’s death has caused him quite a shock. Such a shock, in fact, that in the following stanza the speaker passes into a state of denial. He directly addresses his captain, acting as though he isn’t dead and begging him to get up (lines 9–12):

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning

Eventually, though, the speaker realizes that he has momentarily fallen into “some dream” (line 15), and that his captain is indeed deceased. Hence, in the poem’s final stanza, as he examines his captain for vital signs, the speaker moves out of denial (lines 17–18):

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will

No longer using the second-person pronoun “you,” the speaker now comprehends that his captain is irrevocably lost. As such, he at last enters the final phase of grief: acceptance.

Patriotism as a Form of Love

The speaker of Whitman’s poem has a strong emotional reaction to the death of his captain, suggesting that he cared deeply for his superior officer. In fact, at two points in the poem the speaker addresses his captain as “father.” Both times, the speaker is engaged in a moment of intimate care, cradling the captain’s head with his arm and checking for signs of life. As an example, consider the opening of the third stanza (lines 17–18):

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will

The speaker’s shift from “Captain” to “father” indicates something more than mere respect for a superior officer. Indeed, the speaker clearly feels a great deal of love for his captain. Here, it’s important to recall that the scenario set forth in the poem is an extended metaphor for the United States of America. The ship symbolizes the state, which the “captain”—that is, President Abraham Lincoln—has successfully navigated through the rough seas of the Civil War. With this in mind, the speaker’s love for his captain may be said to stand in for the love Whitman feels for Lincoln. In other words, Whitman frames his own patriotism as a form of love for the man who led the nation through dire straits.

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