Dead Poets Society

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1989

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-5

Chapters 6-10

Chapters 11-15

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Themes

Finding Your Voice

One of the main themes in Dead Poets Society is about finding your voice. This is applicable to all of the members of the Dead Poets Society, but it is perhaps the most relevant to the character of Todd Anderson. From the beginning of the novel, Todd is presented as struggling with speaking in front of others. When he receives his extracurricular assignment from Headmaster Nolan, he wants to ask to be on the rowing team instead of doing soccer. When he gets the chance to speak up, however, “Todd [stands] silent. He struggle[s] to say something, but the words just [won’t] come out” (11). As a result, he is kept on the soccer team instead of being allowed to row, like he wants.

Neil gives Todd a hard time about this at first. He says, “Todd, if you’re gonna make it around here, you’ve got to speak up. The meek might inherit the earth, but they don’t get into Harvard, know what I mean?” (18-19). Though Neal teases Todd at first, he later realizes just how difficult it is for Todd to speak in front of others. This becomes especially clear when Todd feels inadequately suited for the Dead Poets Society, because he is too afraid to take a turn reading in front of the others. When Neil realizes how serious he is about this, he talks the group into letting Todd join and take minutes instead of reading aloud.

Mr. Keating’s class advocates for finding your individuality. On their first day with him, Mr. Keating points out the previous students, most of whom never learned to think for themselves. He drills a sense of critical thinking into his students, asking them to forget sounding silly or different, and instead focus on being honest. When he finally gets Todd before a crowd, the exercise begins with Todd in terror of facing the class and ends with the class on the edge of their seats, captivated by Todd’s poem. In that moment, “Todd [takes] a deep breath and for the first time he smile[s] with an air of confidence” (76). After that, Todd begins to trust his ideas and writes more poems of his own, poems he eventually reads to his friends in the cave on the night of Neil’s death. Todd’s discovery of his voice parallels how the rest of the class are also finding their individual self-expression.

Finally, the final gesture in Todd’s character arc is his act of bravery as Mr. Keating is leaving. He defends Mr. Keating to Cameron, but, even more daringly, defends him in front of Nolan. He defies Nolan’s demands to stop talking and sit down, and instead leads the class in a salute to Mr. Keating. He, who used to be the shyest of the group, is the first to take a stand on his desk. Todd, in the wake of their leader’s death, has risen as the new leader of the group. He has found his own voice at last, and more importantly, has overcome his fear of using it.

Individual Thinking and the Dangers of Conformity

The primary conflict in Dead Poets Society is a battle over the future generation: a battle between a continuation of conformist thinking and the freedom to think for oneself. Welton is intent on creating a group of like-minded students, where they are drilled into obedience. In Hager’s trigonometry class, “[h]ands [fly] into the air, students [stand] up and [sit] down like robots, reeling off answers, staunchly taking harsh reprimands for mistakes” (22). They are kept isolated from the world outside the academy walls, away from girls, from other people in the town, away from anything that might corrupt the students, who “personif[y] the Ivy League image” (3). All of the teachers uphold a certain level of standards and use a tried-and-true curriculum that hasn’t been changed in years. All of this is put to the test when Mr. Keating arrives at Welton.

Mr. Keating’s class is immediately different than the others. For one, he hardly stays in the classroom itself, instead transforming other locations into places of learning, such as the courtyard, a hallway, and the soccer fields. One of the first things he teaches his students is “Carpe Diem” (25), which translates to “seize the day” (25). He tells the students that one day they will all pass away, so they have to make every moment count while they can. He tells his students to rip out the introduction to their poetry books that tries to calculate the excellence of a poem the way you would calculate a math problem, and he stands on his desk to teach the idea of changing your perspective. He tells them, as they take turns standing on his desk, “You must strive to find your own voice, boys, and the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all” (61). It is in Mr. Keating’s classroom that the world the boys have known all their lives is, for the first time, challenged. It is there that they learn the power of words, the dangers of uniformity, and the enlightenment of free thought.

This is not a welcome sentiment in Welton. After Charlie pretends to receive a phone call from God, Nolan confronts Keating about his pedagogy. He wants to address some rumors about “some unorthodox teaching methods in [his] classroom” (109) and to remind him “that boys [Charlie’s] age are very impressionable” (109). Mr. Keating responds that education is about learning to form one’s own opinions, but Nolan disputes him, saying the boys are too young. Later, the administration is quick to blame Mr. Keating’s bucking of traditions for the death of Neil Perry. They claim the boys are victims of his unconventional teaching and that he put ideas in Neil’s head about abandoning the medical career his father had planned for him. Ultimately, he is not allowed to stay at the school. However, in a final moment of gratitude and allegiance, the boys demonstrate that they have, in fact, learned to think for themselves when they stand on their own desks at the end of the novel.

Father/Son Dynamics in Overachieving Environments

There are three types of fathers or father figures in Dead Poets Society, and each one is an integral part of the novel. First, there is the overbearing father, Mr. Perry. Second, there is the absent or distant father, Mr. Anderson (Todd’s father), and third, there is the supportive father figure, Mr. Keating. Each of these dynamics demonstrate potential father/son relationships, particularly as they relate to a culture of overachievement. Thus, each of these also reflects on potential growth, or repression of a young mind in such an environment.

Mr. Perry’s parenting method is to smother his son, making commands of Neil without taking Neil’s own interests into account. When he believes Neil is taking on too many extracurriculars, despite the fact that he has maintained excellent grades all the while, Mr. Perry is quick to pull him out of his position as the assistant editor for the school annual. Neil tries to speak up, but his father takes him outside the dorm room and warns him not to keep talking. He “[stands] silent in front of his father. His resolve always crumble[s] under the threats of guilt and punishment” (16). Neil feels that he can’t be himself around his father, so he instead starts to break his rules behind Mr. Perry’s back. When Mr. Perry finds that Neil stayed in the play even though he ordered him not to, he tightens the grip he has on Neil’s life. He is going to send him away from Welton to somewhere even more strict: military school. He has his son’s entire life planned out, and this leaves Neil feeling trapped. Ultimately, these feelings overcome Neil, and prove to be fatal.

Todd’s father isn’t in the book nearly as much as Mr. Perry, but his presence, or lack thereof, still greatly affects Todd. While all of the other Welton families are saying their goodbyes to each other, Todd is left standing alone, while “[h]is parents [chat] nearby with another couple, paying no heed to their son” (6-7). In the photograph of his family, Todd is noticeably set apart from the rest of the group. His brother and parents are clearly a unit, and Todd the outlier. Todd is even envious of Mr. Perry, for he’d rather be controlled than invisible. When he and Neil become closer friends, he confides in Neil that he thinks his parents don’t love him. They are so busy with his older brother that Todd is left in the background. Todd asks Neil:

You know what my Dad called me when I was growing up? ‘Five ninety-eight.’ That’s what all the chemicals in the human body would be worth if you bottled them raw and sold them. He told me that was all I’d ever be worth unless I worked every day to improve myself. Five ninety-eight. (84)

This comes as a shock to Neil, who suddenly feels he understands why Todd feels so worthless compared to everyone else. He was raised to believe that he was of minimum value and of no more worth than a collection of chemicals, and so he began to take it as truth.

Mr. Keating is the one father figure who shows up for both Neil and Todd, and fills the shoes for their fathers. He is supportive of their dreams, and pushes them to be better and believe in themselves. They go to him for advice, and they can be themselves around him. Mr. Keating doesn’t ask for perfection from the boys, he asks for honesty. Under his influence, they start to thrive in their lives outside of academics as well as they do at school.

These three types of father figures are common in an environment like Welton, which is full of overachieving students and parents who seek prestige, honor, and pride themselves in the achievements of their sons. Mr. Perry, who is not as financially stable as some of the other Welton families, sees Neil’s future as a doctor as a lifeline: It is a life he was never afforded and thus feels the need to control. He reduces Neil to his brain and his achievements, and is too quick to forget that Neil is a person with his own passions and desires for life. Todd’s father becomes so absorbed with his firstborn that he creates an unhealthy image of “the perfect son” for Todd to strive towards. In the attempt to make Todd reach his full potential, he has in fact made him feel like he can do nothing right. However, father figures such as Mr. Keating set their children up for success. These parents, the ones who support and listen to their children, best equip their children to take on the stress of these high-striving environments. They feel supported and seen, as opposed to strangled or abandoned.