Dead Poets Society Dead Poets Society. Dir. Peter Weir. Perf. Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard. Buena Vista Pictures Distribution, 1989. DVD. As we view the film, answer the questions below using complete sentences. Also, pay particular attention to the discussion of poetry and quoted lines of poetry throughout the film. The text of these poems and some related poems are included in this packet. Section 1 Vocabulary: Carpe diem Latin for seize the day! pillar: a column that supports the roof of a building tradition: something that is done the same way consistently in a society honor: respect from society discipline: self-control excellence: the best possible work Ivy League: 8 universities that are usually considered the best in the USA (Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale University) Questions: 1. What are the Four Pillars? 2. What adjectives could you use to describe the teachers at Welton? The students? 3. How is Welton different from other American schools? Is this difference good? 4. What values do you think are important to the parents of students at Welton? 1
Section 2 Vocabulary: a stiff: a dead person (euphemism) put one's foot in one's mouth: say something that embarrasses you bootlicking: trying to make a superior like you by doing extra favors (slang) valedictorian: the best student in a class extracurricular: activities that are not assigned by a school dispute: disagreement travesty: terrible mistake horror: terrible, frightening decadence: choosing to live without self-control excrement: solid waste that comes out of the body (medical term) Questions: 1. Describe the situation between Neil and his father. What did they disagree about? 2. Tell a little about each of the boys. Neil: Todd: Knox: Charlie: Cameron: Pitts: Meeks: 2
3. How do the boys act toward each other when they meet? 4. What is unusual about Todd's brother? 5. Describe Neil's conversation with his father. Why was Neil's father upset? Why was Neil upset? 6. What classes do the boys take? Section 3 Vocabulary: captain: military leader rumor: stories that do not have any evidence to prove if they are true hymnal: book of religious songs lads: young men (archaic, Scottish) invincible: cannot be conquered, cannot be destroyed "the world is your oyster": the world is something that may have a treasure for you one iota: a tiny amount fertilizing: adding nutrients to the soil daffodils: yellow flowers that grow in spring legacy: inheritance, what someone leaves behind that is valuable spooky: scary, feeling like ghosts are present suit yourself: do whatever you want Questions: 1. What is unusual about Mr. Keating's English class? 2. What does Mr. Keating ask the students to call him? Why does he ask them to call him this? 3
3. How does Keating try to gain the boys' trust? Section 4 Vocabulary: spitting image: the exact copy (slang) like father, like son: the son is a copy of his father engaged: promised to be married to someone misguided: believing false ideas cynic: someone who believes there is no good realist: someone who believes that you should admit the good and bad hell-raiser: a wild person who causes trouble amnesia: a mental disease causing loss of memory marrow: the material inside the bones demerits: official punishments, usually in the military swoon: lose consciousness (usually used of women, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries) Questions: 1. Why is Knox upset after meeting Chris? What does he plan to do about it? 2. According to Mr. Keating, what is the difference between good and bad poetry? 3. What is the Dead Poets Society? 4. Why is Knox upset after meeting Chris? What does he plan to do about it? 5. Why does Mr. Keating tell the boys to rip the pages out of the book? What does he want to teach them? 4
6. How do the students respond to Keating's teaching style? 7. How do the other teachers respond to Keating's teaching style? 8. Why does Keating say that the school administration would not approve of the Society? Why would they object? Section 5 (after viewing the film) 1. Do you agree with the school s decision regarding Professor Keating? Why or why not? 2. What are some positive qualities about Professor Keating? Explain your answer thoroughly. 3. What are some negative qualities about Professor Keating? Explain your answer thoroughly. 4. After viewing the film, identify which character the film is truly about and provide evidence and an explanation. 5
Journal Prompt 8: Why Poetry? Read the following quotation from Professor Keating. What is he trying to say? Do you agree or disagree with him? Explain your answer thoroughly. We don t read and write poetry because it s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. Professor John Keating, Dead Poets Society (1989) Journal Prompt 9: Perspective Read the following quote by Professor John Keating from the movie Dead Poets Society. What do you think it means? Explain. I stand on my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things a different way. The world looks very different up here... Just when you think you know something you have to look at it in another way... When you read, don t just consider what the author thinks. You must consider what you think. Professor John Keating, Dead Poets Society (1989) Journal Prompt 10: Thoreau s Back Keating references some quotations from Walden (quoted below) by Henry David Thoreau. Read these quotations and think about their context in the film. How is Keating s philosophy related to Thoreau s philosophy? I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. 6
To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time by Robert Herrick Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old time is still a-flying : And this same flower that smiles to-day To-morrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he's a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he's to setting. That age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer ; But being spent, the worse, and worst Times still succeed the former. Then be not coy, but use your time, And while ye may go marry : For having lost but once your prime You may forever tarry. 7
O Me! O Life! by Walt Whitman (from Leaves of Grass) O Me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; Of the endless trains of the faithless of cities fill d with the foolish; Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light of the objects mean of the struggle ever renew d; Of the poor results of all of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me; Of the empty and useless years of the rest with the rest me intertwined; The question, O me! so sad, recurring What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here that life exists, and identity; That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. 8
from Song of Myself by Walt Whitman 1 I celebrate myself; And what I assume you shall assume; For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. I loaf and invite my soul; I lean and loaf at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass. My tongue, every atom of my blood, form d from this soil, this air, Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same, I, now thirty seven years old in perfect health begin, Hoping to cease not till death. Creeds and schools in abeyance, Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten, I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy. 6 A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands, How could I answer the child? I do not know what it is any more than he. I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven. Or I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrance designedly dropt, Bearing the owner s name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark, and say Whose? Or I guess the grass is itself a child, the produced babe of the vegetation. Or I guess it is uniform hieroglyphic, And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow zones, Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same. And now it seems to me the beautiful uncut hair of graves. Tenderly will I use you curling grass, 9
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men, It may be if I had known them I would have loved them, It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers laps, And here you are the mothers laps. This grass is very dark to be from the white heads of old mothers, Darker than the colorless beards of old men, Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of mouth for nothing. I wish I could translate the hints about the dead young men and women. And the hints about old men and mothers, and the offspring taken soon out of their laps. What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas d the moment life appear d. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier. 52 The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable; I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest, and true as any, on the shadow d wilds; It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun; I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt, to grow from the grass I love; If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles. 10
You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged; Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere, waiting for you. 11
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair, And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. 12
O Captain! My Captain! by Walt Whitman 1 O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done; The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won; The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring: But O heart! heart! heart! O the bleeding drops of red, Where on the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. 2 O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; Rise up--for you the flag is flung--for you the bugle trills; For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths--for you the shores a-crowding; For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; Here Captain! dear father! This arm beneath your head; It is some dream that on the deck, You've fallen cold and dead. 3 My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still; My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will; The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done; From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won; Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells! But I, with mournful tread, Walk the deck my Captain lies, Fallen cold and dead. 13
My Papa s Waltz by Theodore Roethke The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother s countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt. 14
Walking Away by Cecil Day Lewis It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day A sunny day with leaves just turning, The touch-lines new-ruled since I watched you play Your first game of football, then, like a satellite Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away Behind a scatter of boys. I can see You walking away from me towards the school With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free Into a wilderness, the gait of one Who finds no path where the path should be. That hesitant figure, eddying away Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem, Has something I never quite grasp to convey About nature s give-and-take the small, the scorching Ordeals which fire one s irresolute clay. I have had worse partings, but none that so Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly Saying what God alone could perfectly show How selfhood begins with a walking away, And love is proved in the letting go. 15
Richard Cory by Edwin Arlington Robinson Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And he was always human when he talked; But still he fluttered pulses when he said, 'Good-morning,' and he glittered when he walked. And he was rich - yes, richer than a king - And admirably schooled in every grace: In fine, we thought that he was everything To make us wish that we were in his place. So on we worked, and waited for the light, And went without the meat, and cursed the bread; And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head. 16
Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. 17