Journal 30

Walt Whitman during his lifetime wrote a lot of poems. A lot of them and I mean a ton of them were published and looked at by millions of readers. He sends a great message through all of them, but there was one poem that I really enjoyed reading and I am going to tell you why. The poem that I have chosen that I have enjoyed the most is "O Captain, My Captain". I have chosen this poem because it has a great message with it and it was enjoyable to read. Everybody remembers president Lincoln. He was in my opinion one of the greatest presidents of all time and I am sure that everyone else almost feels the same way. The things he did during his presidency was incredible compared to what the other presidents did. In a time that would seem to be impossible to control, Lincoln took control and did the right things which made him how popular he is today. Anyway, Whitman did a great job with Lincoln in the poem "O Captain, My Captain". The captain in this poem is President Lincoln, hence where I said all the information about Lincoln. Walt Whitman is talking about when Lincoln got shot in the head in the theatre. He says, "But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red", so he is talking about when Lincoln got shot in the head and he is bleeding very badly. "Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead", this part of the poem is talking about how Lincoln is dead on the floor. I do not really know why this poem has such a big impact on me. I really liked president Lincoln and the things he did. I never knew that Walt Whitman had written "O Captain, My Captain" for Lincoln or even related to Lincoln. Then we went over it in class and I finally realized that it did talk about Lincoln and it finally made sense to me. Everything Whitman did in this poem whether it was the description he used or just because he wrote about Lincoln, either way I enjoyed the poem.

http://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/194