Not To Blame In Dead Poet's Society

Dead Poets Society is a film about a group of young boys attending a preparatory school, Welton Academy, where they meet their new English teacher, Mr John Keating. Keating teaches them life lessons, telling them to seize the day, and about avoiding conforming to the system. Inspired by Keatings story on how he was in the Dead Poets Society when he was attending Welton, the boys start their own version of the illegal group, against Keating’s advice. One of the boys, Neil, who has great ambitions but is held back by his controlling father, gets inspired by Keating’s teachings and auditions for a Shakespeare production. To his father’s dismay, he plays the part, but when his father tells him he is withdrawing him from Welton, and sending him to a military school, Neil commits suicide.

It is certain that Keating’s teachings have inspired many conflicts in the school, and many people want to blame him for all the bad things that have been happening. I disagree: I think that many of the events at Welton are not to blame on Mr Keating.

The teachers make their students do too much work, and the school enforces strict policies, like the school uniforms, not letting its students off campus without permission, and not allowing girls in the school. All these factors make for an environment that no teenage boy would like. Sooner or later they would find out that this not a life they want, and they would want to rebel, as that is in a teenager’s nature. Mr Keating was just the one to point this out to them and to show them there is a different way to live life. If the school was not as strict, the boys would have little to rebel against, so that Mr Keating’s teachings would not trigger negative behaviour from the boys. It wasn’t Mr Keating’s fault that the boys rebelled against the school, but rather the fault of the school and the boys