Dead Poets Society Literary Elements

Peter Weir

Robin Williams

Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Josh Charles, Gale Hansen, Normal Lloyd, Dylan Kussman, James Waterston, Allelon Ruggiero

Drama

English

Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay (1990, Tom Schulman)

June 2, 1989

Steven Haft, Paul Junger Witt, and Tony Thomas

The film is set at the elite Welton Academy for boys in 1959

The film has no one point of view or narrator, but rather follows the stories of multiple Welton students, including Neil Perry, Todd Anderson, and Knox Overstreet. While John Keating is considered the film's main character, he's almost never featured on his own, but instead is shown primarily in relation to other characters, especially his students.

The film's mood alternates between the tension created by the adults' strict authority over the students and the students' more light-hearted frivolity. It begins as mature and serious, highlighting the no-nonsense atmosphere of the academy, but moves to a more carefree feel when the boys are allowed to express themselves in private, and especially once Keating's classes begin. Once Charlie publishes the scandalous article in the Welton Honor, things grow more tense and serious, and ultimately escalate into the somberness of Neil's death and the emotionality of the film's final scene.

Protagonists: John Keating; Neil Perry; Todd Anderson; Knox Overstreet. Antagonists: Neil's father; Headmaster Nolan.

The major conflict comes as Keating's lessons about individuality and courage create resistance against Welton's strict adherence to conformity and tradition, ultimately culminating in Neil Perry's suicide and Keating's firing from the school.

The movie's climax comes when Neil Perry, forlorn at the prospect of leaving Welton Academy, giving up acting, and following his father's strict plans for his future, takes his own life with his father's gun.

Mr. Keating unintentionally foreshadows Neil's death in class when he says, "This is a battle, a war, and the casualties could be your hearts and souls." The friction his lessons create with the strictness of Welton's administration do turn into something of a war, one by which Neil ultimately feels trapped, and the casualty, quite literally, becomes his heart and soul, and figuratively those of his loved ones who are left to mourn his loss.

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Keating's students using the phrase “O Captain, my captain” to say goodbye to him at the film's end is an allusion to Walt Whitman mourning the loss of President Abraham Lincoln, whom Whitman admired very much, following his assassination. In a direct parallel, the boys mourn the loss of a great teacher taken from them under terms that they consider unjust.

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On the first day of classes, we see a shot of a huge flock of birds taking to the sky, and then immediately we see the Welton students "flocking" to class, so to speak, in parallel.

The boys convening the Dead Poets Society in the woods in order to live deliberately is a direct parallel to the experience of Henry David Thoreau in his book "Walden."