Exploring the Text

1. What is the extended metaphor that runs throughout the poem? Explain how it operates in the poem. What is its rhetorical effect?

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - What is the extended metaphor that runs throughout the poem? Explain how it operates in the poem. What is its rhetorical effect?
2. How do contrasting images of achievement and success, on the one hand, and images suggesting loss, on the other, contribute to the effect of the poem?

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - How do contrasting images of achievement and success, on the one hand, and images suggesting loss, on the other, contribute to the effect of the poem?
3. What is the tone of the poem? What is the speaker’s attitude toward his subject? Explain.

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - What is the tone of the poem? What is the speaker’s attitude toward his subject? Explain.
4. In American Literature: The Makers and the Making (1973), Cleanth Brooks, R. W. B. Lewis, and Robert Penn Warren discuss how scholars, critics, and poets have esteemed Walt Whitman’s work and state, “But as a poet, for most readers and over too long a period of time, Whitman was chiefly known as the author of ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ the worst and least characteristic poem he ever wrote.” Do you see the poem as they do? Might there have been good reason for Whitman to use a simple and popular form for this poem? Support, qualify, or refute the position taken by these scholars. Use analysis of this poem and others by Whitman as evidence.

   Question

   ALMF/kS1zzW73MouRsoXk1h0lKY=

   Exploring the Text: - In American Literature: The Makers and the Making (1973), Cleanth Brooks, R. W. B. Lewis, and Robert Penn Warren discuss how scholars, critics, and poets have esteemed Walt Whitman’s work and state, “But as a poet, for most readers and over too long a period of time, Whitman was chiefly known as the author of ‘O Captain! My Captain!’ the worst and least characteristic poem he ever wrote.” Do you see the poem as they do? Might there have been good reason for Whitman to use a simple and popular form for this poem? Support, qualify, or refute the position taken by these scholars. Use analysis of this poem and others by Whitman as evidence.