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RED Warm lips are red, blood drops are too, Abe Lincoln was shot, the nation was blue. In the poem" O Captain! My Captain!" by Walt Whitman, the color red is used as a symbol for many objects. Red symbolizes blood shed, life, happiness and it also associates with love, life, and vitality. Other things that can relate to red are compassion, hatred, and pain. These elements are what gives the poem its voice and …

…negative. This can be proven with " For you bouquet...eager faces turning" to " It is some dream...cold and dead" in stanza two and similarly in stanza three. Red is used as a symbolism for love, for hate, for happiness and death. A "good" matched with a "bad". This contrast is used throughout Whitman’s poem, telling of the joy of the people for the ship’s return and the sorrow of the captain's death.