Comparison of Whitman and Dickenson Poems - 856 Words

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. 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. br brHope is a Thing with Feathers and O Captain! My Captain! contain a similar scansion. Both have a predominantly iambic meter. The unaccented beat followed by the accented beat creates a rising†¦show more content†¦Unlike in Dickinson s poem, the rhyming scheme carries throughout the whole poem, although the AABBCDED rhyme pattern contains a few cases of near rhyme. br brDickinson and Whitman also use similar poetic devices in Hope is a Thing with Feathers and O Captain! My Captain! Each poem contains an extended metaphor. In Dickinson s poem, a bird clearly symbolizes hope. The first stanza introduces the bird metaphor: ‘Hope is the thing with feathers--/That perches in the soul. The next lines ‘And sings the tune without the words--/And never stopsÂâ€"at allÂâ€" illustrate the interminable nature of the bird and hope. The second stanza expands the metaphor by saying ‘And sweetestÂâ€"in the GaleÂâ€"is heardÂâ€". The bird s song, or hope, is the sweetest during a Gale, or troubled times. The first lines in the final stanza ‘I ve heard it in the chillest land--/ And on the strangest Sea describe the bird, or hope, as being everywhere. The last lines ‘Yet, never, in Extremity,/It asked a crumbÂâ€"of Me show the unselfish nature of the bird; hope never asks for anything in return. O Captain! My Captain! contains a more c omplicated and cryptic extended metaphor. Basically, Abraham Lincoln captains the metaphorical ship of the United States through the Civil War. The second line ‘The ship has weather d every rack, the prize we sought is won means the United States survived the tribulation of the Civil War, and the citizens won the prize they sought, unity. Abraham LincolnShow MoreRelatedHow Fa Has the Use of English Language Enriched or Disrupted Life and Culture in Mauritius15928 Words   |  64 PagesDickenson’s poem â€Å"Because I could not stop for Death† details the events the narrator experiences after dying. In the poem, the narrator is driven around in a horse-drawn carriage to several places, including a schoolyard, a field of wheat, and a house sunken in the ground. However, a deeper reading of the poem reveals the poet’s uncertainty of whether there is or is not an afterlife. The events she describes are of course fictional and unknowable, but the multiple chang es in pacing of the poem, as well