dead poets society oh captain my captain

Dead poets society oh captain my captain movie#

Though a celebrative poem, it ends with the words “Fallen cold and dead”, image ratified twice in this text. This is a perception of things and reality that still astonishes nowadays, because it gets far away from the American heroic celebration of glory and victory. With his poems Whitman theorized his visionary ideal that places man, instead of the perception and understanding of things, as focal point. This sadness unrewarded by memory and glory is not a surprise, considering how close to phisicity was Walt Whitman. Though in the scene described by Walt Whitman we find won prizes, exulting people, sound of bells, the taste of the poem is irremediably sad the exultation after the war is senseless because of the death of all those who’ve lost their lives to fight for a cause (both the 'right' one and the 'less right' one).Īnd, in the end, even if the sign of Lincoln will unforgettably remain in the blood of an entire country, like the teaching of professor Keating for the students of the Welton academy, he’s gone, and the memory can’t fulfill the physical absence.

The Captain (who’s just left the ship) is Lincoln himself. In that case the Ship is the US, and the fearful trip is the difficult situation faced by the Country during, but even after the end of the secession war. O Captain! My Captain! Was written after Lincoln’s murder. The American author wrote this elegant and passionated metaphor of the America of his era (the years of the Secession War) after the death of Abraham Lincoln, another character that is reviving a period of movie&theatre popularity.

Dead poets society oh captain my captain movie#

This now famous movie quotation is, as said in the movie itself, the title and incipit of a Walt Whitman’s poetry.

It was a scream testifying that event though professor keating was leaving, probably forever, his print in their lives would have lasted and his words were were not useless. And he was followed by all his class companions, as if the symbolic ship was, in that case, their prestigious academy together with their future life. Our memory goes to the image of Todd (starred by Ethan Hawke) standing on the school desk and screaming loud the beginning verse of this poetry as a protest against the rules of the school and the disillusionment of adulthood that were taking away a dreamer professor from his academy. “Captain, oh my captain! “At least 3 generations have bumped into this quotation, reminding first of all (not for all) the famous movie 'The dead poets society' by Peter Weir.