![]() ” This mantra is not a call to the boys to impetuously grasp at life-though they tend to read it in just this way. Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die.” He asks them to look, to really look, at the “faces from the past” in a trophy case-young men who looked and acted just like they do who are now “fertilizing daffodils.” Lean in, he enjoins, and listen to them-and as the camera scans the black-and-white faces frozen in time, Keating whispers in a ghostly voice: “ Carpe. In his first lesson, Keating connects the phrase carpe diem (seize the day) to a line by Robert Herrick (“Gather ye rose-buds while ye may”), explaining why the poet uses these words: “Because we are food for worms, lads. ![]() It more or less begins with a memento mori. Revisiting the movie as I approach my upper thirties, though-Robin Williams’ age when it was released-I found myself standing opposite these students, with a deepened appreciation for those struggling to reach and raise them. Peter Weir’s film was naturally a hit with teachers-according to, it is the #1 film for and about teachers-and I suspect that it has been screened for thousands upon thousands of high school students since its release. I learned this lesson recently upon rewatching Dead Poets Society, the 1989 drama starring Robin Williams as John Keating, an unorthodox poetry teacher who shakes up a stodgy all-male prep school in the late 1950s. It is a strange thing to return to a coming-of-age story having doubled the age of the angsty protagonist. You can learn more and become a member today to read more pieces like this. Keating, or if you're slightly more daring, O Captain my Captain.The following piece, “What We Stay Alive For: Dead Poets Society and the Crisis of the Humanities” first appeared in the Autumn 2021 issue of Evangelization & Culture, the quarterly journal of the Word on Fire Institute. ![]() Now in this class you can either call me Mr. Who knows where that comes from? Anybody? Not a clue? It's from a poem by Walt Whitman about Mr. If it had been collect, that would have been daring! This is a battle, a war, and the casualties could be your hearts and souls. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because you see, gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. Their eyes are full of hope, just like you. They believe they're destined for great things, just like many of you. They're not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Thoreau said, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." Don't be resigned to that. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all. What will your verse be?īoys, you must strive to find your own voice. That the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. That you are here - that life exists, and identity that the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!… of the questions of these recurring of the endless trains of the faithless… of cities filled with the foolish what good amid these, O me, O life?" Answer. ![]() But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. And the human race is filled with passion. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. ![]() We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. ![]()
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