"Captain! My Captain!"
"Captain! My Captain!" is Robin Williams' epithet. He played a school teacher, John Keating, in Dead Poets' Society (1989) who liberates and guides the poetic spirit of a class at a conservative all-boys boarding school.
When Keating (Williams) is suspended against his and his students' wishes, a boy in the class protests the replacement teacher's conservatism and expresses loyalty to Keating by standing on his desk and declaring,"Captain! My Captain". The entire class follows suite.
When Keating (Williams) is suspended against his and his students' wishes, a boy in the class protests the replacement teacher's conservatism and expresses loyalty to Keating by standing on his desk and declaring,"Captain! My Captain". The entire class follows suite.
I always understood this phrase as a poetic salute to an honourable leader, and it is widely taken to be just that. But this phrase is more ― it's a salute to a dead leader. "O Captain! my captain!", the title and opening line of a Walt Whitman poem (1865), are the words spoken by a sailor to his fallen captain, cradled in his arms. The seaman can't believe his captain died just when the ship is approaching homeport after a victorious voyage. He laments his captain's inability to see the crowds celebrating him.
Whitman wrote this poem to mourn the unexpected loss of Abraham Lincoln. Authorial intentions aside, these words fulfill the same role for Williams. Understanding the origins of the epithet, revisiting famous Williams moments in my mind and on youtube, and remembering how the world gathered together upon his passing, these words are fitting to mourn our unbelievable loss of Robin Williams.
Whitman wrote this poem to mourn the unexpected loss of Abraham Lincoln. Authorial intentions aside, these words fulfill the same role for Williams. Understanding the origins of the epithet, revisiting famous Williams moments in my mind and on youtube, and remembering how the world gathered together upon his passing, these words are fitting to mourn our unbelievable loss of Robin Williams.
O Captain! my captain!
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.