The Dead Poet's Society

Summary:

The movie The Dead Poet's Society is about a group of boys who attend a catholic boarding school during the 1950's. The movie starts right when the new school year is starting. The school year just starts out like a normal school year until they meet their new English teacher, Mr. Keeding. Mr. Keeding turns out not to be such a normal English teacher because he plays games with them and go's outside with them and teaches them poetry and even more weird ways. The boys find out that Mr. Keeding was in something called The Dead Poet's Society when he was a student at the school, so they decide to reform it. The Dead Poet's Society was a club where these boys would go to a cave and read poetry with a passion. A little later in the school year, one of the boys, Neil, decided that he was going to try out for the play, even though his father did not like this idea. So he decided that he would not let his father find out, and he ended up getting the lead of the play. The night of the play, Neil thought his father was in Chicago and wouldn't be coming, but his father did end up coming. Neil did amazing in the play, but his father was still very mad at him. His father took him home later that might and said that he would be switching schools as soon as possible. Later that night Neil committed suicide with his dad's gun. Everyone blamed this on Mr. Keeding and even though the other kids knew it wasn't his fault they were forced to sign a paper which said that it was Mr. Keeding's fault. The real reason that Neil committed suicide is because of his father always getting mad at him but none of the adults believed it including his dad. Eventually Mr. Keeding gets fired because of what happened.

Lessons:

I think one of the lessons in this movie is to not judge a book by its cover. For example, all of the administrators had just assumed that Mr. Keeding was the reason that Neil committed suicide because of the advice that he gave Neil, but that advice was really good advice and Neil's dad was the real reason he killed himself. Another lesson here is to stand up for what's right. For example, during the last period that Mr. Keeding was at the school, instead of just letting him walk out sadly, one of the students named Todd, stood up and starting saying a poem that Mr. Keeding taught them and that led to a chain reaction and even though the teacher told the students to stop they kept on going with it until Mr. Keeding left a lot happier than he was.