Dead Poets Society PDF

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Summary

Study guide for Professor Gibson's ENC 1102 final on the movie "Dead Poets Society"...

Description

Dead Poets Society Characters -

John Keating: The professor, main character.

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Neil Perry: Main student, Professor Keating’s most eager disciple.

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Todd Anderson: The quiet and awkward kid in the group.

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Knox Overstreet: The kid who goes for the girl on the cheerleading team.

Key points -

Professor John Keating delivers these words to his students on the first day of school at Welton Academy, symbolizing his unorthodox approach to education and his desire to inspire his students to “make their lives extraordinary.”

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Keating’s words ring true to his students because they represent an alternative to the ideas they’re used to hearing from their teachers and parents.

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In stark contrast to the cyclical, “one size fits all” philosophy of life that Welton offers its students, Keating’s philosophy of life is grounded in one simple fact: we are all going to die.

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Keating sees sameness as the basic condition of death—i.e., something to fight against. Therefore, he argues, a good life should resist sameness and blind conformity. Because life is all-too short, students should make the most of their time on the earth.

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The tragedy of Dead Poets Society is that some of Keating’s students misinterpret his celebration of life, originality, and the “carpe diem” mindset to mean that a life without creativity and originality is worthless and not worth living.

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But when his father, Mr. Perry, finds out that Neil has been neglecting his studies for theater, he forbids Neil from performing, and Neil is so distraught that he kills himself.

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Neil’s tragic mistake is to twist Keating’s idea, “because we’re going to die, let’s live life to the fullest,” into a far grimmer idea: “because we can’t live life to the fullest, we should die.”

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Keating’s “carpe diem” philosophy is, above all, a celebration of life over death. While Neil’s misinterpretation of “carpe diem” leads to his death, Keating inspires many of his other students to lead lives structured around their own unique passions, ignoring the dictums of their parents and other Welton teachers....