Seize the day! Make your lives extraordinary.” This idea of carpe dium is central to the message of the movie and a key part of romanticism. One of the first things Mr. Keating tells the students is to call him “Oh Captain, my Captain,” which comes as a shock to the students who are told by strict orders by all other teachers to refer to them formally. He teaches the boys to think for themselves, a lesson looked down upon at the elite academy directed towards developing their minds through learning out of textbooks. Mr. Keating then has the boys stand on their desks to teach them how they can see the world in a different way.
His unorthodox methods not only taught the boys to think for themselves, but they also awoke the boys’ inner desires and dreams. This movie does an excellent job of portraying the school’s four pillars (tradition, honor, discipline, and excellence) and the four I’s (individualism, innocence, intuition, and imagination) through members of the Dead Poets Society, specifically Todd Anderson and Charlie “Nuwanda” Dalton. Todd Anderson showed the best understanding of the philosophies of transcendentalism, notably Ralph Waldo Emerson’s. Todd failed to follow Emerson’s philosophy of “Imitation is suicide” until the very last minute of the movie, when he daringly stood up on his desk and called out “Oh Captain, my Captain!” to Mr. Keating. He could not hold in his guilt anymore because he felt bad for conforming, or imitating, what the other members of the Dead Poets Society had done in Mr. Nolan’s office.
The movie Dead Poets Society follows a group of teens at a strict school who become heavily influenced by the transcendentalist philosophies of their new teacher, Professor John Keating. The values they are taught completely change their entire perspective and attitude towards life. For the most part this is a good thing, as the boys normally lead boring lives that they are bored with. They form a group known as the Dead Poets Society and their lives are immediately changed forever. They live by the philosophies of writers like Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
It is not an effective way to correct positively. Rogers talks about separating the behavior from the person. By giving "take up time" the teacher lets the student save face in front of his classroom. He suggests giving directions and immediately walking away. I believe this is a great way for students to be able to make a choice about their behavior.
They used this understanding very effectively to engage the audience and tell their story. The plot of this multi-award winning movie was created as a whole. Aristotle believed that these series of events should have a beginning, middle and an end. What he really meant was that each event should flow into each other to make a complete hold. Therefore there should be no abrupt or unnecessary event.
The big difference between both essays is that the boys feel different in the class. In “I Became Her Target,” the boy feels important because the teacher is giving him a chance, by answering questions. The teacher also gave him the opportunity to finish another classmate’s answer, to make him look smart. This boy had a positive experience; at the end, kids came up to him to laugh about “Old Deadeye Bean.” The teacher threw an eraser at him, which caused his pencil to fly across the room. This made him feel accepted and he made new friends.
“Sucking the marrow out of life doesn’t mean choking on the bone.” This quote was told to the students in the film Dead Poets Society by Mr. Keating. In my perspective, this quote means that you should live life to the fullest and do things for yourself, but you should not go too far and take it to the point where you harm yourself, others around you, or your life. Mr. Keating expressed the idea of romanticism to his students but he also tried his best to make it clear to his students that there was a time to live life, and a time to be serious, but I think the boys may have forgotten that. Those who are unable to control their passions experience the extremities of whether it is realism or romanticism. One student of Mr. Keating’s that
If you are being governed than you are not truly independent. In my belief to be truly independent you must be able to do what you want when you want and have nobody tell you what you can or can not do. The only true way to have independence is to make your own decisions instead of basing your decision on what society thinks. How can a person be truly independent if they have to do what other people think is the right thing to do? The answer to that question is that they can not be independent.
To end this "tangent" of how I truly felt about the movie, I would like to focus in on the good parts of what really the story was about. That story was to focus in on the students who were in need of education, and not the typical reading and writing portion, but also the education of confidence, happiness, and well-being of the students. The one part I took away from both the film and the book is that once again one man can change a young group of students. To finish off the reaction essay, I would like to answer the last question that was asked, about how I saw a portion of the film and how I really saw it in my mind. I wanted to focus in on one portion when beanpole and his friend are in his room, and the detail of the leaky roof, the wobbly desk, and the bed without a mattress really allowed me to materialize in my mind what I thought of this tiny room.
By telling them to rip the pages from their poetry textbook, he plants the seed of enthusiasm within each of them. They all have aspirations that have been crushed by the conformity of life and Mr. Keating helps them to realize their dreams. “Carpe Diem” becomes a central quote in the movie. Each boy soon seizes the day for himself. For the first time these boys come to the realization that they can be their own individual and that they can think for themselves.