Analysis of Dead Poet's Society

In Peter Weir's coming-of-age tale of students at a private school, Dead Poet's Society, the director conveys the importance of maintaining a value system to give life richness and meaning. For the most part, the film's message and the poems used to help convey it to the students center mainly on challenging authority and the status quo. Prose from works like Seize the Day, by Saul Bellow, is used to reinforce the message of embracing life and living for one's own dreams. This response will illustrate how the film and the poems used in it help convey the importance of maintaining a value system.

Values are like ghosts. They are always with us but typically just outside our consciousness. When something conflicts with our values, we tend to react in one manner of expression or another. Dead Poet's Society conveys the message that having a value system of your own construction is important for living a rich and meaningful life. We see this most clearly in the value dilemma faced by Neil Perry, who values the arts and wants to be an actor in opposition to his father's value system that demands he become a doctor. We see Perry refer to Bellow when he exclaims, "For the first time in my whole life, I know what I wanna do! And for the first time, I'm gonna do it! Whether my father wants me to or not! Carpe diem" (Weir, 1989). The message implies that only by living a life following one's own value system can one hope for meaning and fulfillment.

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Category: Film - A