O CAPTAIN! MY CAPTAIN!:
RESEARCH PROJECTS

• Write and perform the trial of the First Mate, who would naturally be the prime suspect in the captain’s murder.

• Watch the film Dead Poets Society, in which Robin Williams stars as a zany English teacher (as if there is any other kind) who tells his students to call him “Oh Captain, My Captain.” Write an essay explaining why it is useful to spend two hours watching a movie that mentions the title of one particular poem a few times.

• Some critics believe that Whitman’s poem “To a Common Prostitute” was about president James Buchanan, best known today as the president who never married. Read “To a Common Prostitute”; then, find five other Whitman poems that you think may contain coded references to presidents, kings or prostitutes, and do not be shy to explain each.

• Watch an episode of the television series The Twilight Zone, which usually ended each week with an improbably, supernatural twist (such as a ship’s captain lying dead on the deck, unnoticed). Explain the ways that Rod Serling, the guy who comes out at the end to explain the plot twist to dumb people, is like Walt Whitman, and the ways that they are nothing alike.

• Research how many ship captains are killed in mutinies every year. If this poem were not about Abraham Lincoln (a reasonable interpretation, since it never says it is about him), who do you think killed the captain? Remember that, surprisingly, “bosun” is a real person, while “Colonel Mustard” is not.