O Captain! My Captain! Themes
Admiration
Abraham Lincoln is not just a vampire hunter. He's a standard and well-recognized hero for many Americans. In “O Captain! My Captain!,” the speaker has an intense amount of admiration for his c...
Patriotism
A patriot is not just some guy who is good at football. It's a person who loves their country so much that he or she would fight to protect the rights and freedoms that the country values. In “O...
Suffering
More than 620,000 people died in the Civil War, and that doesn’t include the overall suffering that the war created. The Civil War doesn’t really come into the story of “O Captain! My Captain...
Men and Masculinity
Macho, macho man. Whitman was obsessed with the idea of masculinity. He associated it with work, war, citizenship and politics, and stern father figures. “O Captain! My Captain!” seems to throw...