Poetry in Dead Poets Society
As can be expected, “Dead Poets Society” gives the poetry an important role.
Several poets are quoted or discussed.
For example, Robert Frost's “The Road Not Taken”, or Robert Herrick's “To The Virgins” are approached.
However, Walt Whitman's “O Captain!
My Captain!” and Henry D.
Thoreau's “Walden” are certainly the most important poems of the film. “O Captain!
My Captain” is important because that's how students have to call Keating, when they feel daring and because we can liken the poem and the movie.
A few of “Walden”'s sentence were read at the beginning of every Dead Poets Society meeting, but this poem is actually what the movie is about: 'sucking the marrow out of life', 'seizing the day', 'carpe diem'.
Despite all this, we can notice that even though Keating, who is an English literature teacher, never, in the movie, analyzed, or criticized or even studied a poem.
He just commented a sentence.
This non-analysis might have led his students to misinterpret some of his “lessons”.
For example, with “The Road Not Taken”, he only says : “Robert Frost said, ‘Two roads diverged in a wood and I / I took the one less traveled by / And that has made all the difference.’”.
What he forgot to say is that, in the rest of the poem, Frost's character is mocking his choice, something we can not know without the context.
May 2014
Bầu chọn ngay! 