The period of the Civil War affected America in many different ways, including literature. Many authors of this time told of their often negative opinions about the war, satirized the event, and attempted to reveal the truth on contrary to what many people believed war to be. Of the many works regarding this era, two of them, O Captain! My Captain! and An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge share striking similarities between each other. Despite being completely different types of literature, the former a poem while the latter a short story, both texts share the common thread of death. In both texts, the concept of death is the main subject that progresses the plot, but each a bit differently. By including this commonality, both authors attempt to reveal the more bitter side of the war. O Captain! is an extended metaphor about the end of the Civil War and the death of Abraham Lincoln. The tone of the poem starts joyful as the…show more content… The tone of each affects the reader’s perception of the deaths of each individual in the texts. In O Captain!, the tone is more personal and emotional, as the captain seems to be someone who the sailor has known very dearly. From the context clues, the sailor is very much heartbroken with the death of his “father.” Consequently, the death of the captain is much more touching on the reader, similar to how the death of Lincoln affected the American people. The captain’s death is rather “noble,” he passes away before he gets to see his accomplishments (the ship making it home), like Lincoln is killed days following the end of the Civil War. The death of the “common man” in An Occurrence, although unexpected by the reader at the end of the story, is not as emotive as the death of the Captain. The reader may perhaps feel disappointed that Peyton’s escape was his hallucination, but not as poignant, as death was already his fate at the very