Effect of Walt Whitman\'s Cataloging in a Poem

Walt Whitman's poetry is unique in American literature. He used imagery of nature to transcend genre. Most of his works deal with individual human emotion, such as love or lust or hate. However, he also used these techniques to create beautiful images of individual people. Another characteristic of many of Whitman's poetry is the use of cataloging or listing of moments which all relate back to the central theme of the given poem. In Whitman's poetry, whether it be nature-themed or autobiographical piece, the stanzas are all tasked with proving the initial thesis of the given piece. In his poem, "O Captain! My Captain!," Whitman uses his characteristics writing techniques to catalog the emotion of the American citizen after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

In the first stanza of the poem, Whitman discusses the happiness of the people as they celebrate the end of the Civil War and the reunification of the country. This is juxtaposed with the end of the stanza where the man who is responsible for that reunification has been shot. In only a few lines, the attitude of the poem changes from celebratory to grieving, just as the men and women of the country must have felt in that turbulent era. Though many men have died and sacrificed during the war, everyone believed that the terrible things were over. This belief was shattered "where on the deck my Captain lies, / Fallen cold and dead" (Whitman lines 7-8). The narrator of the piece not only stands for Whitman, but the nation as a whole.

The second stanza deals with what happens after that initial realization that a great man has been killed. It begins with the narrator nearly begging the deceased to rise up from his grave to witness how he has been missed and to see through this act of national mourning, the effect he had on the world. Whitman lists the various ways that the citizens are expressing their grief, such as with the American flag, "ribbon'd wreaths," and ringing bells. Every eye is on the funeral procession just like every mind is focused on the culmination of the Civil War. It is as if the narrator, and by extension Whitman, is trying to reach his dead captain from the land of the living.