Dead Poets Society was one of the better films I’ve seen in quite awhile. There’s a lot to unpack from the movie so I’ll just focus on one specific aspect of the film. Neil Perry wants to follow his dreams of being an actor, but his father doesn’t approve and eventually ships him off to boarding school. Neil is so grief-stricken he commits suicide.
The scene when his father finds him dead is extremely powerful because I don’t believe most viewers expected something like that to happen. It was a deadly shock, just like in real life. Watching a scene like that really made me consider my own mortality. As we go about living our life, we rarely think of the fact that we will die, crumble to dirt, and be completely and utterly forgotten. We can usually stave off this realization with the trivialities of the day and other distractions. This begets people who live their whole life without having really lived at all.
I think the biggest lesson to take away from Dead Poets Society is that you are alive today, but not for long. Your life could end in a snap: there is but a fragile strand holding you here. Live like Robin Williams’ character in the movie: with vivacity and without fear. Obviously this is a tall order, and I don’t expect to be able to achieve such a goal in any real capacity. But I’ll be damned if I don’t try.
The fear of being forgotten is a really interesting thing about humanity. I think that is one of the things that motivates art: why else do we write novels, build monuments, paint and photograph our likenesses, if not to immortalize ourselves in some capacity? I don’t think every culture has the same relationship to death as the Western one, which is predominantly fear, and I have wondered if that has to do with the Western way of viewing property. Really we are just borrowing these atoms that hold us together and give us life, but we feel ownership over our bodies and it’s disturbing to think that after our deaths nature will systematically disintegrate us. So we have to find other means of living on…
I think you preach a very important lesson. As someone who has experienced the scene you described from the movie in real life, I understand your point about being forgotten in an instant. I have thought about this more after coming to Cornell as it calls into question my own existence and future.
You definitely make a good point. Sometimes when we are so wrapped up in our own problems, it’s so easy to forget that there’s more to life than a test grade, or any other stress that we are going through. I believe the idea of being fearless is difficult sometimes when we constantly have this pressure to be the best versions of ourselves all the time. Finding that balance is important to help us keep in perspective what’s really important.