Abstract:Oh, captain! My captain! was written by celebrated American poet Walt Whitman to commemorate the president Lincoln. In this poem, Whitman combined the rhythm of the traditional poetry with unique rhetoric devices thus strengthen the tragic atmosphere.
This paper will analyze the poem from three aspects: content, rhetorical techniques, and the artistic feature of form. The rhetorical techniques mainly focus on the following four areas: repetition, metaphor, imagery and apostrophe. Through the analyzing, readers may understand how these rhetorical devices make language more accurate, vivid and powerful, as well as how to highlight the poet’s sincere and strong emotion. In addition, this paper also probes into another characteristic of the poem: the contrast of form and content as well as the use of static and dynamic, and analyses how they enhance the performance of this poetry. I hope this analysis in my paper can help people to understand Walt Whitman’s writing style and his techniques better.
Key words: Walt Whitman; captain; rhetorical techniques; static and dynamic
中文摘要:《啊，船长！我的船长！》是美国诗人惠特曼为悼念林肯总统而写下的一首著名诗歌。在这首诗中，惠特曼把传统的韵律诗与独特的修辞手法相结合，有力的渲染了哀诗的悲壮气氛。
本文着重从内容、修辞手法、以及结构上的艺术特点三个方面来分析这首诗。其中，修辞手法的分析着重于以下四个方面：重复、隐喻、意象以及呼语。文章将逐一分析这些修辞手法，使读者了解这些修辞手法是如何使语言表达得更准确、生动、有力，如何凸显诗人真挚、强烈的情感的。除此之外，本文还探讨了这首诗的另一特点：形式与内容的对比以及动静结合的运用，并详细分析了二者是如何增强诗歌的表现力的。本人希望通过对这篇诗歌的分析能使人们更好的理解惠特曼的创作风格及特点。
关键词：惠特曼；船长；修辞手法；动静结合
