Journey Theme in Whitman’s O Captain! My Captain! and Tennyson’s Crossi

Journey Theme in Whitmans O original My master copy and Tennysons Crossing the Bar A mans journey at sea has always been romanticized as an individualistic fight back against the backdrop of the cruel elements of nature. Paradoxically, though, at heart that same journey, the sea possesses an innate sniff out of timelessness that can become a mans betoken for God. In O headman My Captain Walt Whitman describes the narrators sense of aimlessness at sea after his beloved Captain dies. In manufacturing business Alfred Tennysons Crossing the Bar, the speaker is beckoned by the sea and its soundlessness even though he senses foredoom there. And so, although both Whitman and Tennyson employ a voyage at sea as the predominant image and metaphor within similar structural frameworks, they do differ in how they agree the journey and depict the tone of the numbers. In O Captain My Captain uses the ship, the voyage at sea, and the Captain, within the poem to describe the mood of the united States in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. The fearful voyage at sea, then, is an appropriate metaphor for the arduous Civil War, which has finally ended, but ironically, the Captain of the ship, Abraham Lincoln, has fallen dead (Line 2). Whitman uses extensive imagery to describe the North, awaiting the ship to dock, exulting, and their bore faces turning (Whitman, Lines 3, 12). But at the same time, there are inherent burdens of grief that the war brings. Whitman describes the postwar era with a pervading irony within the poem although the prize we sought is won, the true reality of the situation reflects a phyrric victory (Line 2). The narrators mournful tread on the underprice of the ship becomes symbolic for the United States, as the Sout... ...orates the death of the Captain, Tennyson discusses crossing into the terra firma of the afterlife with a stoic calmness, which ultimately leads a solitary death. However, both poets seem to realize their own mortalit y and that death is an indestructible force. trance Tennysons everyday narrator treats crossing the bar as another(prenominal) symbolic stage of the human existence, the beloved Captain is ironically futile to defeat it despite what horrors he may have overcome at sea. Death, then, transcends the social divide no one, from the common man of Tennysons poem to a brave, revered Captain, who has survived the perils at sea, can conquer it.Works CitedTennyson, Alfred Lord. Alfred Lord Tennyson Selected Poems. New York Penguin Books , 1992. Whitman, Walt. Leaves of Grass. 1892 ed. New York Bantam Books, 1983.PID 00621Marlow Engl. 12 Sect. 37