English
Compare and Contrast: Whitman and Dickinson
“America experienced profound changes during the mid-1800’s. New technologies and ideas helped the nation grow, while the Civil War ripped the nation apart (O Captain! My Captain! (Memory)”. During this tumultuous period, two great American writers captured their ideas in poetry. Their poems give us insight into the time period, as well as universal insight about life. Although, polar opposites in personality, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman created similar poetry. Dickinson’s “Hope is a Thing with Feathers” and Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” share many qualities.
When President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, a war-weary nation was plunged into shock. The last great battles of the Civil War were still a recent memory, and the murder of the president seemed to be a bloody, pointless coda to four years of conflict and instability. There was a great outpouring of grief across the country, and poems and songs were written mourning the nation’s loss. One American who grieved for the fallen president was the poet Walt Whitman. Whitman had lived in Washington for most of the war and was a great admirer of Lincoln. “Unfortunately most of [Dickenson’s] poems were not published until after her death, first by her sister. Emily wrote many of her poems during a period of religious revival that swept Western Massachusetts during the decades of 1840-50 (Emily Dickinson Biography )”.
Whitman’s poem is divided into three sections. Each section has got 2 paragraphs. Each paragraph has four lines each. “The first paragraph of each section, has a rhyming scheme of a-b, a-b. The second paragraph of each section, has a rhyming scheme of a-c, b-d. This gives the poem an overall effect of a melodic character (O Captain! My Captain!)”. In the three sections, the lines of the first paragraph are longer than the lines on the second paragraph. The first paragraph is the question, and the second paragraph is the
“America experienced profound changes during the mid-1800’s. New technologies and ideas helped the nation grow, while the Civil War ripped the nation apart (O Captain! My Captain! (Memory)”. During this tumultuous period, two great American writers captured their ideas in poetry. Their poems give us insight into the time period, as well as universal insight about life. Although, polar opposites in personality, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman created similar poetry. Dickinson’s “Hope is a Thing with Feathers” and Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” share many qualities.
When President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on April 14, 1865, a war-weary nation was plunged into shock. The last great battles of the Civil War were still a recent memory, and the murder of the president seemed to be a bloody, pointless coda to four years of conflict and instability. There was a great outpouring of grief across the country, and poems and songs were written mourning the nation’s loss. One American who grieved for the fallen president was the poet Walt Whitman. Whitman had lived in Washington for most of the war and was a great admirer of Lincoln. “Unfortunately most of [Dickenson’s] poems were not published until after her death, first by her sister. Emily wrote many of her poems during a period of religious revival that swept Western Massachusetts during the decades of 1840-50 (Emily Dickinson Biography )”.
Whitman’s poem is divided into three sections. Each section has got 2 paragraphs. Each paragraph has four lines each. “The first paragraph of each section, has a rhyming scheme of a-b, a-b. The second paragraph of each section, has a rhyming scheme of a-c, b-d. This gives the poem an overall effect of a melodic character (O Captain! My Captain!)”. In the three sections, the lines of the first paragraph are longer than the lines on the second paragraph. The first paragraph is the question, and the second paragraph is the