Michel Schröder – University of Göttingen – Feb 28, 2016

Film essay on “Dead Poets Society”

“Carpe diem”, which is Latin for “seize the day”, is the overall theme of the
critically acclaimed 1989 preparatory school drama Dead Poets Society written by Tom
Schulman, directed by Peter Weir and starring Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Josh
Charles and Ethan Hawke.
In 1958, the Welton academy alum John Keating starts teaching English literature at his
alma mater. The traditional preparatory school is well-known for its successful preparation
of students for Ivy league colleges such as Havard and bases its education on four pillars:
tradition, honor, discipline, excellence. In contrast to his colleagues, Mr. Keating encourages
his students to “strive to find [their] own voice” in order to live a fulfilled life and, even
more important, to learn to think for themselves. The students discover Mr. Keating's
involvement in a poetry club, the Dead Poets Society, which he co-founded as a student at
Welton. Inspired by his unconventional teaching style, they re-found the club and secretly
meet in the middle of the night. Neil Perry, the protagonist, is oppressed by his father who
planned Neil's future life without Neil's consent. In the end, Neil kills himself after his
father's disagreement towards Neil's acting ambitions.
One of Dead Poets Society's central themes are the unorthodox teaching methods of John
Keating which encourage the students to think and live independently but in the following I
will examine a second core theme of the film which interacts with the first. While many
essays about Dead Poets Society emphasize the film's focus on the students developing a
critical consciousness, I will take a look at the omnipresence of death within the film and its
importance in close connection to the film's theme of “carpe diem”.

The most obvious appearance of death in this film is the end in which the protagonist
Neil Perry commits suicide. His (academic) life was already planned by his father and Neil
had no influence on that matter. Inspired by Mr. Keating's teaching of the sentiment “carpe
diem”, he decides to put matters in his own hands and signs up for the lead role in the
school's play “A Midsummer Night's Dream”. To pursue his dream of participating in the
play, he even fudges his father's signature below a letter to the school's principal, which he

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also intentionally fakes. In the first lesson of the English class, Mr. Keating reads To the
Virgins, to Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick with his course and emphasizes the first
stanza of the poem, which is:
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.”
Keating chose the poem because of its message to “seize the day”. He encourages his
students to follow their heart and to use the time they have on earth because this time is not
limitless and it matters what one can achieve in this limited timespan. Although Mr. Keating
had a big impact on all the boys' lives, he especially influenced Neil with his teaching. In
contrast to Neil's father, his teacher is more understanding towards his acting ambitions and
talks to him privately to support him pursuing this path. By playing the main part in the
school's play, Neil chooses his own path which distinguishes from the plan his father had
in mind for him. The inspiration he gets from Herrick's poem lead him to achieve the goal of
seizing the day. Neil's story arc in the film is the impersonation of the first stanza of the
carpe diem-themed poem by Herrick. He “gather[s] his rosebuds while [he] may” through
his participation in the play and thus him revolting against his father. Neil realizes that his
time is limited and that he has to stand up against his father before it is too late. Eventually,
Neil's father removes his son from Welton Academy and sends him to a military school
instead after the premiere of the school's play. This incident is, on a metaphorical level, an
impersonation of the last two lines of the first stanza of the poem since Neil is the smiling
flower which is dying by being removed from his friends and from the play he participates
in. As a consequence, Neil realizes that he will not be able to change his unpromising future
because of the power of his father. As a last resort, he chooses to commit suicide in the
office of his father. Since there is no possible way for him to become an actor and to “gather
[his] rosebuds” he lifts the metaphorical dying flower on a level in which he is a real dying
flower. Although it is not explicitly mentioned, Neil's death in his father's office and his
father holding him in his arms is another metaphorical expression of Herrick's poem. If
Neil's father had gathered the rosebuds – in this case Neil's talent in acting - in time, he
would not have lost him forever.

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 The eponymous Dead Poets Society, which was co-founded by John Keating when
he was a student at Welton Academy, is another central point of the story. The students come
together at midnight to read poetry aloud to each other. Mr. Keating's love for poetry
inspired them to organize the meetings and to enjoy the beauty of poetry. Obviously, death
is mentioned in the title of the club and refers to the poets who are read while the club meets
– all are dead for a while but made their impact on the world. At the beginning of each
meeting, Neil reads the first lines of Walden; or Life in the Woods by Henry David Thoreau,
which were read by the original Dead Poets Society as well.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,
To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die
Discover that I had not lived.”
That the students in the film read this particular part of the poem is another prove for the
importance of death for the film itself. As in Herrick's poem, which I mentioned before,
again, life and death are strongly connected. Thoreau emphasizes of what importance it is to
him that he lives a life of liberation and deepness. He deals in absolutes by stating he wants
to “suck all the marrow out of life” to prevent him from realizing that he did not live at all
when he finally dies. Mr. Keating tries to teach his students that exact lesson by saying that
they will all find noble professions after school but that their job will not be what life is all
about. To him, poetry is “what we stay alive for”. It is not a coincidence that the students
read Thoreau before each meeting of the Dead Poets Society, because Thoreau's poem not
only addresses the sentiment of “carpe diem”, it also employs “memento mori”, which was
another sentiment in the German baroque poetry. “Memento mori” means that one should
remember the moment and the fact that everyone has to die eventually. Thoreau's poem is a
motivation for the students to make their lives worth living and to fill their lives with
something which is worth living. Participating in the Dead Poets Society is only a starting
point for them, they are motivated to make progress for themselves. Each of the students has
his own problems to solve: Neil wants to escape the oppression of his father, Todd Anderson
wants to learn how to abandon his diffidence and Knox Overstreet wants to get closer to a
girl he likes. They all learned that life is not endless and that it is their own responsibility to
improve their lives by themselves. But the reason for their sudden wish to make their own
lives “extraordinary” is not life itself, it is death. When you do not know that your life is

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going to end one day, why would you even care to make it special or why would you “seize
the day” when you could seize a day a long way down the road? The film emphasizes the
connection between life and death and that these two complement one another. It was
Thoreau himself who justified his will to live with his eventual death.

In the aftermath of Neil Perry's suicide, all members of the Dead Poets Society were
forced to sign an untrue letter which held Mr. Keating and his teaching methods responsible
for Neil's death. This marked the end of Mr. Keating's teaching career at his alma mater, his
professional death for that matter. When he leaves his classroom for the last time while his
former students are taught in English literature by the conservative headmaster of the
school, Mr. Nolan, it was shy Todd Anderson who overcame his shyness and stood up
against Mr. Nolan's rule to be quiet and let Mr. Keating leave right away. Todd risks his
school (and future Ivy league college) career to show his former teacher what he learned
from his teachings. Half the class joins Todd in his tribute to Mr. Keating who eventually
leaves the room with a smile.
This scene can be connected to one of the first lessons Mr. Keating taught in the film. After
he talked about the sentiment of “carpe diem”, he gathers the students around him and tells
them that life is a play and that it is up to them whether they “may contribute a verse”. He
reminds the students that “words and ideas can change the world”. When Mr. Keating talks
about “the powerful play”, he is not talking about the life of a single person, he aims at the
whole world which is, to him, nothing more than a big play. He encourages his students to
discover their ability to make a difference while they are alive and not to take everything as
the status quo. With this lesson, Mr. Keating tries to motivate the students to make an impact
and to leave a mark. They are not able to write the whole play on their own in his metaphor,
but it is in their hand to be able to add just one verse to the play. He does not specify what
kind of verse he is thinking of, he just wants to empower them to take on the challenge of a
fulfilled life.
Coming back to the closing sequence, his teaching career at Welton had just ended and the
film does not specify on his future but with a dead students directly connected to his
unorthodox teaching methods, he may not work in this field ever again. Mr. Keating himself
truly lived the life he advised his students to live: he taught with passion and love and was

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eager to make an impact by opening the eyes of his students towards things they never
thought about before. He seized the day by teaching the way he wanted to teach, even if it
was in contrast to the usual teaching methods at the school. Metaphorically speaking, he
lived his life in “the powerful play”, which in this case is the school, and found his death
when he was fired from the school. Since he knew that his methods were seen as
unorthodox, he always knew that one day he might be fired because it did not fit into the
school's philosophy. When he leaves the classroom for the last time and half the class are
standing on their table – revolting against the headmaster – he notices that he left his mark,
he contributed a verse.

All in all, the interrelation of life and death in the film is omnipresent. Many scenes
in the film consist of real life decisions and actions which are based on poems written by
long-dead poets. Most of the poems used in the film mention life and death within a small
number of lines. Mr. Keating's teachings of an “extraordinary” life and the sentiment of
“carpe diem” are inspiring the different students to pursue things they never pursued before.
To underline the importance of death throughout the film, it is inevitable to consider life and
death as complementing one another. One has to “suck the marrow out of life” and “seize
the day” just for one reason: life will end sooner or later because death is what we all share
in life. The world will not stop spinning when we are gone and if we do not “seize the day”,
we will not be able to “contribute a verse” at all.

Word count: 2096.

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 Work Cited List

Dead Poets Society. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan
Hawke, Josh Charles. Touchstone Pictures, 1989. Film.

Herrick, Robert. “To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time.” Poets.org. Academy of
American Poets, n.d. Web. 26 Feb 2016.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden, Or, Life in the Woods. Garden City, NY: Anchor/Doubleday,
1973. Print.