![]() ![]() If not, it’s open-heart surgery.” In yet another eerie parallel, Williams underwent actual open-heart surgery seventeen years later - a procedure that, according to the prestigious Cleveland Clinic Foundation and a multitude of medical authorities, puts patients at a significant risk for postoperative depression. ![]() When you’re comfortable with it, you can be free about it. I get near them and think, I’m not ready to deal with that yet. (In the same interview, Williams also stated: “Some issues are deeply personal. Williams, of course, didn’t write the film, nor the scene - but he did carry both, and as he once observed in a 1992 Playboy interview, “characters are just a free way of talking as yourself.”Īs soon as one fully grasps the soul-ravaging depths of depression, a tragic parallel between Williams’s death and Lincoln’s emerges, lending Whitman’s eulogy double poignancy - Lincoln was assassinated by antagonists he had dedicated his life to fighting, and Williams died by the claw of the ghastly inner monster that severe depression lodges in the human spirit, losing a long fight with the unholy ghost. Among Williams’s most beloved films is the 1989 classic Dead Poets Society, in which Whitman’s poem serves as a centerpiece - Williams’s character instructs his students to call him “O Captain! My Captain” - and it appears in one of the film’s most memorable scenes: The recurrence of Whitman’s grim refrain in the context of Robin Williams’s suicide is strange and poignant happenstance. While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring: The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won O Captain! My Captain! our fearful trip is done It was an allusion to Walt Whitman’s 1865 elegy “O Captain! My Captain!,” a mourning poem for Abraham Lincoln titled after its piercing refrain: Web.In the introduction to Quack This Way - the remarkable record of Bryan Garner’s wide-ranging conversation with David Foster Wallace - Garner makes a passing mention of the email address Wallace used in their correspondence: … The email provider following the symbol changed over the years, but Wallace kept his moniker - one that takes on a special, wistful meaning in light of his subsequent suicide. “O Captain! My Captain!” Poetry Foundation, 1891. “Two Worlds of Mourning: Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln’s Death.” National Portrait Gallery. “Exploring the Realization of the American Dream-Taking the Pursuit of Happiness as an Example.” Advances in Social Science, Education and Humanities Research: 2020 International Conference on Language, Art and Cultural Exchange (ICLACE 2020), Shijiazhuang, 2020. “Lincoln, Abraham (1809–1865).” The Walt Whitman Archive. The death of the captain means not only Lincoln’s assassination but also the end of one of the stages of the American Dream and the beginning of a new one that will be brought to life by the protagonist, every American. It is noteworthy that these two persons are “often linked as kindred spirits” (“Lincoln, Abraham (1809–1865)”). Ward notes that “Walt Whitman wrote two memorial poems about the death of Abraham Lincoln.” The literary work under discussion in this paper is one of them. It is no secret that the plot revolving around the sudden death of the captain during the triumph in the poem symbolizes Abraham Lincoln and his assassination. Abraham Lincoln in “O Captain! My Captain!” ![]() The ship’s arrival symbolizes the American nation achieving this stage of the American Dream since the Northern States abolished slavery and reunified the country. “The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won” line tells readers about it (Whitman). As a result, the political and social models of North and South, Union and Confederation, began to conflict with each other, leading to the Civil War in which the former won. Then, the pursuit of individual freedom, equal socioeconomic opportunities, and the desire to abstract from the old ways of Europe developed into the idea of a democratic society (Wang 33). “Our fearful trip is done” line is about that (Whitman). It was a dream that everyone could take a ship across the ocean to new lands, find their new home, and become successful there (Wang 33). The American Dream originally was a concept similar to a new beginning. Whitman’s poem provides a glimpse into the essence of the American Dream and the way people of those times perceived it. Learn more “O Captain! My Captain!” and the American Dream
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