Opinion on Dead Poets Society

Last Tuesday I watched Dead Poets Society and while I have seen it before and found it intriguing, this time was different, very different. When I last saw it I believe it was in class during junior high or maybe even my early high school years. The point is it was a long time ago and so I was not as mature as I am now.

For those of you who have not seen this movie I would strongly recommend it and I would advise not reading on any further. I would not want these thoughts about the film to sway your own assumptions and expectations. We need to be clear on why I am writing this thought. Ever since last Tuesday when I saw the movie I have been deeply stirred up about things like conformity and following your dream or should I say “carpe diem.”

You see, in this story in 1959 Neil Perry is in his fourth and final year at Welton Academy, a college prep. boarding school, and we come to learn that his parents, particularly his father, are extremely strict about Neil’s future. He is to graduate high school, go to Harvard, and then to medical school - no question. But through many occurrences in the story, he pursues an acting role with all of his life’s passion as Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream against his father’s command. Neil acts in the play and is greatly praised for his outstanding performance by everyone except his father. Later that night his father tells him that he will be leaving Welton, be sent to military school, then go to Harvard, and then to medical school. Neil is utterly distraught as the viewer is too and through a series of somber motions, Neil uses his fathers pistol to take his own life.

This is where I am left. There is part of me who thinks what happened was good because it’s what the father deserved but a greater part of me longing for Neil to have just run away from home so that he may act another day and follow his life’s passion and seize the day. This greatly disturbs me because I can surely assume that things like this have happened plenty of times and if only it wouldn’t have happened, that would be encouraging. That conformity and blindness were not so overwhelming and restricting on the youth, that would be encouraging. That we and they, the youth, were not so weary and discouraged by society’s one-way streets, that would be encouraging. That open-mindedness may prevail over the harsh circumstances that come to place fault amongst the innocent and the innovators of time, that would be encouraging.