Walt Whitman's 'O Captain!, My Captain!' and 'Passage to India'

This was composed in 2014.

Walt Whitman's 'O Captain!, My Captain!' and 'Passage to India' in terms of their

thematic content. Commenting on the imagery and language of each poem

bringing out the differences and similarities.

- Venus Anand

Walt Whitman, was born on the 31st May, 1819 in Long Island, New York, U.S. He was an essayist, poet and journalist, as well as a volunteer nurse in the course of the American civil war (1861-1865). Walt Whitman participated in the shift from transcendentalism towards realism, and both views are present in his works. Walt Whitman, being one of the most influential American poets is often referred to as "the father of the free verse". His first work was 'Leaves of Grass' which was first published with Whitman's own money in 1855 and was described by himself to be an attempt at reaching the common person through an American epic. Inside as well as outside his poetry, Walt Whitman exposed his views on the abolition of slavery, an egalitarian view on races, even if later in his life he saw abolition, as a potential threat to democracy.

Abraham Lincoln is the centre of topic in his poem named ‘O Captain!, My Captain!’. Lincoln was the sixteenth president of the United States of America. He bears an image of a hero in the eyes of his fellow Americans. USA in honour of his works has felicitated him on five-dollar note series. In “O Captain! My Captain!,” the speaker has an intense amount of admiration for his captain, a stand-in for President Lincoln. The speaker’s admiration for the captain is different from that of the people on shore. The speaker has witnessed the captain’s actions first-hand. Back on land the people share in the speaker’s admiration and cheer the ship into the harbour. What the captain has done specifically to win everyone's admiration is never really made clear in the poem but we do get the end results of his admirable action. He's steered through rough seas and sacrificed his life to ensure the safety of the ship. The sailor seems to admire the captain as though the captain was an ideal masculine father.

In 1869, two marvels of engineering altered the course of history forever. That May, the last spike was driven into the ground on the American transcontinental railroad, connecting the country definitively from East to West. Six months later and half a world away, the Suez Canal opened in Egypt. By joining the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea via an artificial waterway, it allowed transportation and trade between Europe and Asia in record time, without navigating around Africa. The canal promised to change the face of world commerce, but it also extended the possibilities of cultural exchange between nations. In the poem ‘Passage to India’, the poet admires the engineers and celebrate scientific achievement that made the two marvels of engineering possible, as well also admire the people who had an imagination of making this project, a success indeed. The achievement that requires a great skill of

engineering, the canal was also a triumph of the human imagination. Whitman credits both technology and arts here. The “facts of modern science” alone aren't enough to explain the project's completeness. Repetition plays a key role in his praise. He sees the opening of Suez Canal as both a reason for celebration and an opportunity to connect with the spiritual traditions of faraway land. He praises the very few people who possess substantial wisdom that could imagine such possibilities, and the new era of worldliness and peace that might come of it. Whitman specially demonstrates his excitement and admiration for the achievement, for e.g.. He opens by relating the canal to both science (“proud truth of world”) and myth (and fables of eld”).

A patriot is a person who loves his country so much that he would fight to protect the rights and freedoms that the country values. In “O Captain! My Captain!”, Whitman celebrates the bond that patriotism creates between the average citizen and the leader of the people. The captain is portrayed as a patriot who has risked his life in some mission for the people on shore. The masses on shore celebrate the captain's success, and the ship’s return with all the trappings of patriotism: flags, bugles, and bells. The sense of inclusiveness is ultimately one of the sentiments Whitman is trying to convey here. Turning finally to address the soul, the launching pad for human endeavour, Whitman uses repetition for emphasis once again to give voice to what he sees as God’s purpose for the new passage to India—to bring people of all nations and races together. When “The earth be spanned connected by network” barriers are erased, love is nurtured, and people evolve. Whitman is imagining here not only the actual canal, but the broader implications of a ‘Passage to India’, a place that represents for Whitman, and no doubt many of his American readers, an exotic and foreign land. Therefore, India can be termed as an exotic foreign land. he literal passage thus becomes a metaphorical one, bridging the continents and allowing for new kinds of communion between people of all nations. Imagining a peaceful new era with his eye fixed on a higher purpose Whitman addresses all the people who made the canal possible and implores them to see not just their technological prowess but the spirituality of their endeavour. Just as the Suez Canal links distant parts of the world, Whitman’s poem links ancient religions and modern technology, God and engineering. In doing so he encourages us to see a bright future extending an invitation that is both reverent and hopeful.

In the poem ‘O Captain!, My Captain!’, Poet used a very simple and effective language, he uses lot of similes and metaphor. For e.g. -

‘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 ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done; From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won’

And in the poem ‘Passage to India’, the poet used a very scientific language by elaborating technical terms in the poem so that reader can get what is trying to demonstrate by his words about the inventions that have been in the time recently.

For e.g. -

‘A worship new, I sing;

You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours!

You engineers! You architects, machinists, yours!

You, not for trade or transportation only,

But in God’s name, and for thy sake, O soul.’

In the poem ‘Passage to India’, lines four through six employ anaphora by each starting with the word the creating a catalog of imagery that accumulates power and momentum as the poem progresses. In each succeeding line, that repetition takes a new form in Whitman’s direct address “you” to the temples, fables, and towers of foreign lands. It’s these exotic institutions “myths and fables” that Whitman invokes, and which occupy the lion’s share of his imagination and attention. In the poem ‘O Captain!, My Captain!’ the poet tries to describe his journey by using the imagery, the poem depicts about the sea journey and the Lincoln falls on the floor dead. He is just lying there, unable to move, his body got cold. People are cheering up on the shore on the victory of their captain. They are whistling and blowing bugler and the church bells are ringing on the shore. He tells the captain that people are waiting on the shore, their captain will come and address them from the deck.