O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
Walt Whitman
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring
Yesterday evening i watched a movie, that possibly changed the lives of many… But not mine. Why? It certainly was an experience, watching this movie, but i have been trying to live how Mr. Keating taught his students, though most of the time, i have not been successful. It’s not an easy thing to break the rules just a little bit. Else you will end up how Charlie Dalton ended up, and Keating said it right: there’s a time to revolt, and there’s a time to remain silent. Maturity and the “serious thinking” kills the revolutionary spirit in almost everyone, and indeed poetry is one of the things that can save this. It’s very hard to tear apart the binds of the society, to free ourselves from the mud that we can see too clearly, from the inside… The Poets made me promise myself, that as soon as i can, i will start collecting poetry and generally all kinds of literature, and read a lot. Not as if i’d like to become a bookworm (more than i am now), but it really helps to open the mind.
The poem by Walt Whitman i quoted above is a key moment of the movie, though it doesn’t really seem so. Then why? Keating (reference to Keats?) tells the boys in the very beginning that they could also call out to him with the first few words: “O Captain, my Captain!”, which is really shocking. Why? He foresaw it all… read the poem! The Captain is dead by the time the ship reaches the shore.
A few words about the movie itself (really few): it was great. (See, three words are really just a few, nay?) I could relate it to two of my previous experiences: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Edgar Allan Poe, which is a great novel, and Hair. It’s been ages since i’ve seen that film, but remember that good-mannered schoolboy, whose name i can’t recall now, whose car Berger & Co. “borrows”? The Poets reminded me of him. The hopeless revolts in the radically conservative education of the fifties-sixties. How depressing that must’ve been… I can’t even imagine. I don’t think anyone who hasn’t lived through that could: it’s something we haven’t experienced.
You must watch Dead Poets Society at least once in your life. After that, you will want to read dozens and dozens of poems and any other kinds of literature.
Picture source: thanks.
