Summary of 'Dead Poets Society'

The film takes place in a conservative boarding school, Welton Academy, in 1959. The school is very strict and disciplinary and most of the students are probably to become doctors or lawyers. We follow seven boys and their encounter with the school and with their new poetry teacher Mr. Keating. Keating is a former student of Welton, but he doesn’t like the school system. He inspires the boys to seize the day. Carpe Diem. With his untraditional teaching methods he tries to make individuals out of the boys. As an example he tells the class to tear out the introduction in their textbooks because it threats poetry like math. They read about Keating in an old yearbook, and find that he was a member of the Dead Poets Society. As the group confronts Keating with the book, he explains the nature of the club. In a remote cave they held meetings consisting of reading out loud poetry for each other. He encourages them to be careful because it would not please the school board. The Dead Poets Society is reformed. Gradually the boys go through a transformation, each of them in their own way. Neil, who has a very repressive father, is dreaming of being an actor. He sees the opportunity to play the lead in a play and takes it though he knows his father is not gonna like it. He makes a letter “signed” by his father allowing him to participate, but his father finds out and forbids him to. He has other plans for him and that is being a doctor and not an actor. Neil plays the role anyway, but his father appears during the act, and after he takes him home. He has now decided for him to be sent to a military school. Neil is unable to stand up for himself and tell his father what he feels. The same night he commits suicide with his fathers gun in his office. The other boys are shakened. Mr. Nolan, the chairman of the board, needs a scapegoat for the terrible “accident”. All the members of Dead Poets Society are forced into signing a document saying that Keating is the guilty one for Neil’s acting dreams. He is fired and his class is being taught by Mr. Nolan. He enters the class while they are reading the introduction that they ripped out. The entire class shows him their last respect by standing on their tables and greet him with: “Oh captain, my captain”. A salute they were using to Keating, taken from a poem.