Dead Poet Society

Dead poet society is a movie directed by Peter Weir. It has been set at the Welton Academy in Vermont in 1959 which was conservative and aristocratic. The school education is very important but the teachers deliver it in a very boring manner. Tom Schulman wrote the script. Some of the cast in the movie include John Keating, Todd Anderson, Neil Perry, Knox Overstreet, Charlie Dalton, Steven Meeks, Richard Cameroon, Gerald Pitts, Mr. Nolan and Mr. Perry. I choose to write about Mr. Keating who is the English teacher in school. He is also one of the main characters in the movie where he is surrounded by so many events which make him stand out. The movie seems to revolve around him as well as some of his student whom he takes through poetry. He does not fully fit in the school. We see him doing the different thing from what the other teachers are doing like getting into class whistling and making the students kick the soccer ball while they yell out poetry. The three characteristics I will mention about Mr. Keating are: informative and educative, a role model and a hero and lastly funny and caring.

Mr. Keating is very informed and educative. He is an English teacher who inspires his student through his teaching of poetry. We see, for example, that he uses the quote “Suck the marrow out of life” several times during the film with the intention of encouraging the students of his never take any day for granted or waste it. He wants the students of his to apprehend each moment the day offers. He dovetails with his students and wants to educate them about life by means of experience. Mr. Keating requires the boys to run from their reflection which their families anticipate them to follow and to fulfil their own dream. He tries to make the boys learn to live their lives to their fullest and have in mind the decisions they make because sometimes there is no turning back. He is the unconventional educator who tears chapters of his textbook. He tells the boys not to conform, also he tells them to be wise and not stupid about protesting against the system when he gets lectured about the dead poetry society meetings by the headmaster Molan. He showed the boys how to think for themselves through his teaching. We see him telling Neil to read the introduction to their poetry textbook out loud in class. He finds the mathematics criticism ridiculous and hence instructs his pupils to tear the essay. In doing so he shows a freedom of expression and nonconformity. He is informative in that he explains to Neil that dead poetry society was a secret club and its purpose was to tell the meaning out of life. The members had to carefully sit near a certain pond less than a mile from school grounds and recite the poetry. He is criticised by other teachers out his teaching methods, but we see that he is able to answer back and explain his reasons that he is trying to make them free thinkers.

Mr. Keating is a role model and hero. For instance, we see Neil esteemed his doctrine of life also; by the way, he emboldened and motivated students. Neil is controlled by his father who constantly commanded, and the boy didn’t get the courage to resist his father’s will. What Neil wants to accomplish in his life was conflicting with what the father desired. Due to the solace of Mr. Keating, Neil was encouraged to capture the day as it came. Neil was lively and ambitious but at the same time, he was exhausted because his father controlled his life. His heart truly lies in the theatre, he really wanted to play and he dreamed to show his sincere love in his cacoethes for acting. Neil was thinking only about Mid Summer Night’s Dream. He was so elated about trying outs and making major role he dreamed of. He goes directly to his typewriter and starts counterfeiting a letter “from his father,” portraying carpe diem. In the contents of the letter, Neil has been acting as his father and writing that Neil has been allowed to take part in this play. After Mr. Keating finds out that Neil is allowed to take part in the play, he is filled with happiness that father of Neil permits his son to take part in the play. There is both a negative and positive outcome when Neil seizes the day. The positive result is that Neil made his dream come true and come to pass by acting in a play. He risks in chances to do this. Mr. Keating helps Todd to come out of his cowardice and self-pity, we see how he reacts and calls “O, captain! My captain!” Due to lack of self-consciousness when Todd failed to complete the writing assignment Keating takes him through an exercise in self-expression, making him realize the potential he possesses. Mr. Keating is a role model of a true inspiration of carpe diem.

He has changed lives of his students forever. When the boys vacillate to take a part in non-conformity act he just looked at them smiling. He was the kind of teacher that would sacrifice everything to have the students prosper. He desired to provide for his students the best opportunities and chances that life could present. For example, he apprehends the day when he will teach the boys to tear the introduction from their poetry books. He gives directions to the boys to tear the pages out of the book for learning by the books that weren’t his style. He was a kind of teacher which liked to teach through experience. Mr. Keating was an awakening to all his students he improved by putting much sense into each life in some way or other. Mr. Keating reciprocated the respect back to the students making him gain so much more respect from them. When the students needed him, he was there, and in no way would Mr. Keating take for granted an answer that one of his students may have given. He inspires his student to have a passion for poetry. He changed and made their lives extraordinary. He inspires a number of boys to revive a secret society with a bohemian bent by using his passion for poetry and his charisma.

He’s funny and caring. In a seemingly jokey manner, he tells his students that literature has been innovated to allure girls. He makes a realistic imitation of Marlon Brando and John Wayne. His view of things was different and he tried to get the boys to take up his example by standing up on his desk. When children discover the old school yearbook where they find out that their deeply respected professor would be a member of an inscrutable denomination known as the Dead Poets Society; he spills the beans by telling them that they were a group of students who had meetings in the old Indian caves near the school to read Walt Whitman’s poetry and their own and by that means causing girls to faint. Poetry is presented to be an ancient seduction technique making it attractive to these students by Mr.Ketting. As usually, each young generation loves to follow the steps of their idol. His teaching procedure is different from other teachers’ and makes the students attentive. He is caring in that he builds confidence in Todd. We see Todd strains to do what he wants and even joins the dead poetry society. Once in class Mr. Keating asks him to read out his poetry. His caring side is also seen when he encourages Neil to tell his father that he wants to join acting when his father forbids him to join the play. He’s the outgoing, insurrectionary teacher who is against the numbing, does not believe in using brainwashing procedure of so much institutional book-learning and tells the students to take their heart to follow their passions, to think for themselves. We see that when he is faced with conformity that does not differentiate between society and men, it is a man’s responsibility to stand for his believes, for what is true but not what the others stand by or tell him is just.