Point of View

“O Captain! My Captain!” begins in first-person from the perspective of an unnamed speaker. Though the speaker remains nameless throughout the poem, there are clues to his identity. Starting in line 1 of the first stanza and throughout the rest of the poem he refers to the Captain as “my Captain,” suggesting his position as a sailor under his Captain and his sense of emotional closeness to his Captain. When he briefly refers to their shared experiences on the “fearful trip” at sea, he groups himself with the Captain with first-person plural in the form of “our” (1). This “our” once again emphasizes the how both the speaker and his Captain are in the same line of work as seamen. The speaker has a deep affection for his Captain, one that leaves his heart “bleeding drops of red” after his Captain has “Fallen cold and dead” (6, 8).

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