Engage Mod 2

Whether you are not as effective in a group discussion as you would like to be or you handle yourself well in a group discussion, these tips are keys to improving your skills.

LEGENDARY HISTORICAL LEADERSHIP

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,

The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,

For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head!

It is some dream that on the deck,

You’ve fallen cold and dead.

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;

Exult O shores, and ring O bells!

But I with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

Point to Consider:

Who guides the nation, the people or its leaders?

1865 was supposed to be a time of peace. The North had won the Civil war and slavery was in a process of eradication. A man who gave the final push for emancipation was our 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. However, 1865 was stricken with grief when Lincoln was assassinated while attending a performance at Ford's Theater.

"O Captain! My Captain," written by Walt Whitman, serves as an elegy for President Lincoln. An elegy is a poem that mourns the dead. Though Whitman had never met President Lincoln, he had become interested in the man, sensing that he was an unusual leader for the time but his unique disposition was refreshing.

Whitman uses an extended metaphor to depict the nation's grief. An extended metaphor is a comparison between two unlike things that continues throughout a series of sentences in a paragraph, or in this case, lines in a poem. The extended metaphor is as follows:

President Lincoln is the captain
The ship is the United States
The fearful trip is the Civil War
The prize is the preservation of the union.