dead poets society critique essay

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"Dead Poets Society" is a collection of pious platitudes masquerading as a courageous stand in favor of something: doing your own thing, I think. It's about an inspirational, unconventional English teacher and his students at "the best prep school in America" and how he challenges them to question conventional views by such techniques as standing on their desks. It is, of course, inevitable that the brilliant teacher will eventually be fired from the school, and when his students stood on their desks to protest his dismissal, I was so moved, I wanted to throw up.

Peter Weir's film makes much noise about poetry, and there are brief quotations from Tennyson, Herrick, Whitman and even Vachel Lindsay, as well as a brave excursion into prose that takes us as far as Thoreau's Walden. None of these writers are studied, however, in a spirit that would lend respect to their language; they're simply plundered for slogans to exort the students toward more personal freedom. At the end of a great teacher's course in poetry, the students would love poetry; at the end of this teacher's semester, all they really love is the teacher.

The movie stars Robin Williams as the mercurial John Keating, teacher of English at the exclusive Welton Academy in Vermont. The performance is a delicate balancing act between restraint and schtick.

For much of the time, Williams does a good job of playing an intelligent, quick-witted, well-read young man. But then there are scenes in which his stage persona punctures the character - as when he does impressions of Marlon Brando and John Wayne doing Shakespeare.

There is also a curious lack of depth to his character compared with such other great movie teachers as Miss Jean Brodie and Professor Kingsfield. Keating is more of a plot device than a human being.

The story is also old stuff, recycled out of the novel and movie " A Separate Peace " and other stories in which the good die young and the old simmer in their neurotic and hateful repressions. The key conflict in the movie is between Neil ( Robert Sean Leonard ), a student who dreams of being an actor, and his father ( Kurtwood Smith ), who orders his son to become a doctor and forbids him to go onstage. The father is a strict, unyielding taskmaster, and the son, lacking the will to defy him, kills himself. His death would have had a greater impact for me if it had seemed like a spontaneous human cry of despair, rather than like a meticulously written and photographed set piece.

Other elements in the movie also seem to have been chosen for their place in the artificial jigsaw puzzle. A teenage romance between one of the Welton students and a local girl is given so little screen time, so arbitrarily, that it seems like a distraction. And I squirmed through the meetings of the "Dead Poets Society," a self-consciously bohemian group of students who hold secret meetings in the dead of night in a cave near the campus.

The society was founded by Keating when he was an undergraduate, but in its reincarnate form it never generates any sense of mystery, rebellion or daring. The society's meetings have been badly written and are dramatically shapeless, featuring a dance line to Lindsay's "The Congo" and various attempts to impress girls with random lines of poetry. The movie is set in 1959, but none of these would-be bohemians have heard of Kerouac, Ginsberg or indeed of the beatnik movement.

One scene in particular indicates the distance between the movie's manipulative instincts and what it claims to be about. When Keating is being railroaded by the school administration (which makes him the scapegoat for his student's suicide), one of the students acts as a fink and tells the old fogies what they want to hear. Later, confronted by his peers, he makes a hateful speech of which not one word is plausible except as an awkward attempt to supply him with a villain's dialogue. Then one of the other boys hits him in the jaw, to great applause from the audience. The whole scene is utterly false and seems to exist only so that the violence can resolve a situation that the screenplay is otherwise unwilling to handle.

"Dead Poets Society" is not the worst of the countless recent movies about good kids and hidebound, authoritatian older people. It may, however, be the most shameless in its attempt to pander to an adolescent audience. The movie pays lip service to qualities and values that, on the evidence of the screenplay itself, it is cheerfully willing to abandon. If you are going to evoke Henry David Thoreau as the patron saint of your movie, then you had better make a movie he would have admired. Here is one of my favorite sentences from Thoreau's Walden, which I recommend for serious study by the authors of this film: " . . . instead of studying how to make it worth men's while to buy my baskets, I studied rather how to avoid the necessity of selling them." Think about it.

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

Dead Poets Society (1989)

130 minutes

Robin Williams as John Keating

Robert Sean Leonard as Neil Perry

Ethan Hawke as Todd Anderson

Josh Charles as Knox Overstreet

Gale Hansen as Charlie Dalton

Dylan Kussman as Richard Cameron

Directed by

Produced by.

• Steven Haft
• Paul Junger Witt
• Tony Thomas
• Tom Schulman
• William Anderson

Photography by

• Maurice Jarre

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Dead Poets Society Is a Terrible Defense of the Humanities

The beloved film's portrayal of studying literature is both misleading and deeply seductive.

I’ve never hated a film quite the way I hate Dead Poets Society . I expect that them’s fighting words, at least in some quarters; at least I hope they are. Because I’m trying to pick a fight here.

I was in the last year of my English literature Ph.D. program in the summer of 1989, when Dead Poets Society was released. My younger brother Scott, who really didn’t have the money to spare, slipped my wife, Robyn, and me a 10-dollar bill (these were simpler times) and told us he’d watch our kids so we could go out to see it. No one in my family quite understood what I wanted to do for a living or, having finished my bachelor’s degree, why I’d spend seven more years in school to do it; but having seen Dead Poets Society , Scott believed he finally had an idea of what I wanted to do with my life, and more important, why.

We went to the movie and watched, often swept up in the autumnal New England beauty of Welton Academy (the real-life St. Andrew’s School, in Middletown, Delaware). But I walked out horrified that anyone would think that what happens in Mr. Keating’s classroom—or outside of it, because so many of his poetry-derived “life lessons” are taught outside the classroom, after all—had anything to do with literary study, or why I was pursuing a graduate degree in English. I think I hate Dead Poets Society for the same reason that Robyn, a physician assistant, hates House : because its portrayal of my profession is both misleading and deeply seductive. For what Keating (Robin Williams) models for his students isn’t literary criticism, or analysis, or even study. In fact, it’s not even good, careful reading. Rather, it’s the literary equivalent of fandom. Worse, it’s anti-intellectual. It takes Emily Dickinson’s playful remark to her mentor Thomas Higginson, “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry,” and turns it into a critical principle. It’s not.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m all for passion in the literature classroom. Harvard poetry professor Helen Vendler uses two lines from Wordsworth’s The Prelude as the title for an essay about teaching: “What we have loved, / Others will love …” That second line concludes, “and we will teach them how.” That’s how I teach, or hope to teach: with my heart on my sleeve, perhaps, but with my brain always fully engaged. I’m fortunate to do what I love for a living, and I know it. That’s how I was taught, in high school especially. I’m an English professor today because I had Mr. Hansen in ninth grade, and Mr. Jackson in eleventh.

But passion alone, divorced from the thrilling intellectual work of real analysis, is empty, even dangerous. When we simply “feel” a poem, carried away by the sound of words, rather than actually reading it, we’re rather likely to get it wrong. We see Mr. Keating, in fact, making just this kind of mistake during one of his stirring orations to the boys of Welton. In a hackneyed speech about resisting conformity that he seems to have delivered many times before, Keating invokes that oft-invoked but rarely understood chestnut, “The Road Not Taken”: “Robert Frost said, ‘Two roads diverged in a wood and I / I took the one less traveled by / And that has made all the difference.’”

Wha—? Has Keating actually read the poem from which he so blithely samples? For Robert Frost said no such thing: a character in his poem says it. And we’re meant to learn, over the course of that poem, that he’s wrong—that he’s both congratulating and kidding himself. He chooses his road ostensibly because “it was grassy and wanted wear”; but this description is contradicted in the very next lines—“Though as for that, the passing there / Had worn them really about the same,” and—more incredibly still—“both that morning equally lay / In leaves no step had trodden black.” He wants to claim to have taken the exceptional road, if not the spiritual high road; but he knows on some level that it’s a hollow boast.

Keating hasn’t actually read “The Road Not Taken” in any meaningful sense; rather, he’s adopted it, adapted it, made it his own—made it say what he wants it to say. His use of those closing lines, wrenched from their context, isn’t just wrong—it’s completely wrong, and Keating uses them to point a moral entirely different from that of Frost’s poem. (In a like manner, how often has Frost’s “The Mending Wall” been quoted out of context in debates about immigration reform? “Good fences make good neighbors,” indeed.)

The film’s anti-intellectualism is both quite visceral and quite violent. When his students first sit down with their new poetry anthology, Keating tricks a student into reading aloud a few sentences from the banal introduction written by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D.—a cartoonish version of academic criticism that opens with a split infinitive!—before instructing them to tear those pages out of their books. (Though generic-sounding, the essay’s title, “Understanding Poetry,” mischievously nods to the most influential poetry text of the 20th century, Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren’s Understanding Poetry [1938].) Although he employs mock-heroic terms, Keating makes it clear that they’re fighting for their spiritual lives:

This is a battle. A war. And the casualties could be your hearts and souls. Armies of academics going forward measuring poetry. No! We’ll not have that here: no more Mr. J. Evans Pritchard. [Notice how he’s just been stripped of his professional credential.] Now in my class you will learn to think for yourselves again. You will learn to savor words and language. No matter what anybody tells you, words and ideas can change the world.

Their textbook now purged of any taint of critical thought, the students are freed to enjoy an unmediated encounter with poetry in the raw.

This style of working with poetry—what’s sometimes termed poetry “appreciation,” as distinct from poetry criticism—is the m.o. of the Dead Poets Society, Welton’s bookish version of Yale’s Skull and Bones. Mr. Keating explains the purpose of the group to his inner circle of students in a conspiratorial whisper:

The Dead Poets were dedicated to sucking the marrow out of life. That’s a phrase from Thoreau we would invoke at the beginning of every meeting. A few would gather at the old Indian cave and read from Thoreau, Whitman, Shelley, the biggies—even some of our own verse—and in the enchantment of the moment we’d let poetry work its magic … We were Romantics. We didn’t just read poetry, we let it drip from our tongues like honey.

(“We would invoke ”? “Our own verse ”? Who’s writing this stuff?)

If the Welton School officials and parents suspect that Mr. Keating is leading his students astray, Pied Piper-like, there is at least something to that charge. Or rather, he’s sending them astray, without ever really leading them. The first meeting of the reconvened society ends with one of the students reciting Vachel Lindsay’s notorious 1919 poem “The Congo,” a text whose racial politics are ambiguous at best; about it, W.E.B. DuBois wrote, “Mr. Lindsay knows little of the Negro, and that little is dangerous.” Whatever the poem’s real or intended politics, the spectacle of an all-white clique of prep-school boys capering out of a cave into the night while chanting the poem’s refrain (“THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK, / CUTTING THROUGH THE JUNGLE WITH A GOLDEN TRACK”)—well, shudder . Shades of “What Makes the Red Man Red?” from Disney’s Peter Pan . The setting, after all, is the “old Indian cave.”

For all his talk about students “finding their own voice,” however, Keating actually allows his students very little opportunity for original thought. It’s a freedom that’s often preached but never realized. A graphic example is presented in one of the film’s iconic moments, when that zany Mr. Keating with his “unorthodox” teaching methods suddenly leaps up onto his desk. Why? “I stand on my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way,” he helpfully declaims. How bold: He’s standing perhaps two and a half feet off the ground. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay “Nature,” had made the same point rather more radically, suggesting that one “Turn the eyes upside down, by looking at the landscape through your legs.”

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Keating then has the boys march up to the front, of course, and one by one and two by two they mount his desk and they, too, “look at things in a different way”—exactly the different way that he has. After each has experienced this “small alteration in [his] local position” (Emerson), he steps or leaps off the desk, as if a lemming off a cliff: Keating’s warning, “Don’t just walk off the edge like lemmings!” unfortunately serves only to underscore the horrible irony of this unintended dramatic metaphor. Even when the students reprise this desktop posture at the film’s close, in a gesture of schoolboy disobedience (or perhaps obedience to Keating), we realize that while the boys are marching to the beat of a different drum, it’s Keating’s drum. Or they’re dancing to his pipes.

One of the strangest things about watching the film again, 25 years on—for while I’ve long loathed it, until now I’d never actually revisited it—is that I now find myself sympathizing not primarily with the plucky and irreverent John Keating, but to a surprising degree with his “old fart” colleagues whom I’m clearly supposed to find benighted. (It’s also a revelation to watch a young Ethan Hawke, before he could really act—and a young Robert Sean Leonard [Dr. Wilson on House ], before he couldn’t.) Smarmy to the end, Keating, when interrogated about his teaching antics by the school’s headmaster, quips, “I always thought the idea of education was to learn to think for yourself.” The film gives us no evidence that he’s done this for Neil, Todd, Knox, and Charlie. And while too cynical by half, the headmaster’s response is one with which I sympathize a good deal more now than I did back then: “At these boys’ age? Not on your life. Tradition, John. Discipline. Prepare them for college and the rest will take care of itself.” On some level, Keating is a Lost Boy who refuses to grow up. It’s hard to forget, in this connection, that Williams went on to play Peter Banning/Peter Pan two years later in Steven Spielberg’s parental guilt-fueled remake of that story, Hook .

Why does all of this matter? In part, because Dead Poets Society might well be the most enduring and beloved picture ever made about teaching the humanities. While many English professors dislike and distrust the film, there’s another large contingent, even among those who teach literature in high school and college, that loves it. And I’m not deaf to its charms. Compared to his colleagues, Mr. Keating is a thrilling teacher, a breath of fresh air, and rightly beloved. The rote repetition and memorization taking place in adjoining classrooms makes his teaching seem quite vibrant.

But while avoiding the pitfalls of dull pedagogy, Keating doesn’t finally give his students anything in its place besides a kind of vague enthusiasm. Next door, Mr. McAllister’s students are declining Latin— Agricolam, Agricola, Agricolae, Agricolarum, Agricolis, Agricolas, Agrilcolis ; out in the hallway, in front of the trophy case and faded photographs of old Weltonians, Keating preaches it. “Carpe diem,” he entreats, during their first class period together.

With its 25th anniversary nearly upon us, the enduring popularity of Dead Poets Society —voted the greatest “school film” ever made, and often named by viewers as one of the most inspirational films of all time, according to a 2011 piece in The Guardian —has a great deal, I believe, to tell us about the current conversation concerning the “crisis in the humanities.”

Certainly it has been an interesting few years for humanists. Since the economic downturn of 2008, enrollments in humanities courses across the country have declined; at the same time—the flip-side of the coin—colleges and universities are seeing a sharp increase in students majoring in those disciplines which, rightly or wrongly, are thought to ensure better employment prospects at the conclusion of one’s studies. This titanic (if cartoonish) battle, often characterized as STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) versus humanities—Big Science, little man—has been splashed across the higher-education and broader popular press, and has clearly captured the public imagination. The headlines in the Chronicle of Higher Education suggest the contours of the “crisis”: “ The Humanities’ Value ” (“Why should society support the humanities when so many people are suffering from the effects of the economic crisis?”); “ In the Humanities, How Should We Define ‘Decline’? ” (“Colleagues nationwide were stunned to learn a few weeks ago that a French department and four other humanities departments at SUNY-Albany were being sacrificed for their ‘underperformance’”); and even “ It’s Time to Stop Mourning the Humanities ” (“As we are forced to sell out to corporate models of higher education, let’s at least be sure to sell high”).

In the conversation about the fate of the humanities, these disciplines are often caricatured to the point of being unrecognizable to those of us in the component fields. The most alarming version—one, I’m arguing, that has been propagated by Dead Poets Society —is what I’ve taken to calling “sentimental humanities”: humanities content stripped of all humanities methodology and rigor. This is a feel-good humanities—the humanities of uplift. The film is of no help as we try to find our way out of our current standoff—and to the degree that it unconsciously stands in for humanities pedagogy and scholarship, it does real damage. I believe, in particular, that there are two fundamental problems with allowing this Dead Poets Society, sentimentalized version of the humanities to serve as our model for what it means to be deeply and passionately engaged in the study of music, art, language and literature, history, philosophy, religion—of human culture. Call them resistance and acceptance.

Though few will say so publicly, there are those with a stake in the debate who resist granting a greater role in contemporary higher-ed curricula to the humanities. When they resist, it’s often the sentimental humanities that they’re resisting: the conception that the humanities, as a group of disciplines, is more about feeling than thinking. That the humanities is easy, a soft option; that the humanities doesn’t train thinkers. Or more often, and more explicitly, that the humanities don’t train employees. North Carolina governor Pat McCrory made headlines last year by telling the state’s high-school seniors, “If you want to take gender studies that’s fine. Go to a private school, and take it. But I don’t want to subsidize that if that’s not going to get someone a job.” Even our president, with a social science degree (political science) and two years at a liberal arts college (Occidental), has repeatedly trumpeted the importance of technical education and vocational training. Though he’s since apologized , humanists across the country groaned when Obama quipped, at a General Electric plant in Wisconsin on January 30, that “folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art-history degree.”

Oh: and that it’s the refuge of narcissists. No matter the text that he’s ostensibly engaged with, Mr. Keating, like Hamlet in Stéphane Mallarmé’s wonderful description, is forever “reading in the book of himself.” This is what Keating’s namesake John Keats (referencing Wordsworth) called the “egotistical sublime.” Recently, some pioneering work in neuroscience has begun to suggest what English teachers have long known: that the power of literature is the power of alterity, creating the possibility of encountering the other in a form not easily recuperable, not easily assimilable to the self. “Imaginative sympathy,” we used to call it. To read literature well is to be challenged, and to emerge changed.

But for Keating, it’s the text (like Frost’s poem) that is changed, not the reader. He does the same thing to the Whitman poem “O Me! O Life!” that he recites to his students. Used as the voiceover for a recent iPad ad , Mr. Keating’s pep talk quotes the opening and closing lines of the poem, silently eliding the middle: “Oh me! Oh life! / of the questions of these recurring, / Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, /… / What good amid these, O me, O life? // Answer. // That you are here—that life exists and identity, / That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” He’s quoting from Whitman, he says, but the first line he omits is telling: “Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?).” Go back and add that line to the quotation and see how it alters the whole. For Keating—and one fears, examining the scant evidence the film provides, for his students—every poem is a Song of Myself. This, then, is what’s at stake in Keating’s misreadings—I’m not interested simply in catching a fictional teacher out in an error. But he misreads both Frost and Whitman in such a way that he avoids precisely that encounter with the other, finding in poetry only an echo of what he already knows—what he’s oft thought, but ne’er so well expressed.

And when advocates for the STEM fields do make room at the table for the humanities, it’s too frequently this toothless, much-diminished variety they have in mind. Keating says, “We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute.” But I fear that too often, when we do find a place for the humanities in the curriculum, we do so precisely because they are. Cute. Because they make us feel all warm and fuzzy.

The last time our country experienced a “crisis in the humanities,” it coincided precisely with the rise of (largely Continental) literary theory in U.S. English and comparative literature departments in the 1970s and early ’80s. David Richter cleverly calls his classroom anthology of these theoretical readings Falling into Theory , for there’s a fully developed narrative of Edenic purity and postlapsarian cynicism that lies just beneath the surface of the public backlash against the ascendancy of literary theory.

So if, by one logic, the humanities is dismissed as too lightweight, in another they’re banished unless they bear themselves modestly, “come / on little cat feet.” The humanities fell from grace, then, as an unfortunate consequence of its politicization and turn to theory. In this narrative, the “crisis” in the humanities is wholly of its own making: It’s our own damn fault.

In the humanities, unlike the other branches of higher learning, any amount of analysis is liable to be dismissed as “paralysis by analysis” (in the way Keating dismisses Dr. J. Evans Pritchard’s critical method as “measuring poetry”). Those making such a charge might invoke these lines from Wordsworth’s “The Tables Turned”: “Our meddling intellect / Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:— / We murder to dissect.” These lines (especially the last) are much more familiar than the poem from which they’re taken. But I’ve pulled a Keating on you: I’ve taken them out of context, for the first line of the quatrain is, “Sweet is the lore which Nature brings.” Wordsworth suggests that we murder not literature, but nature, with our “meddling intellects” (in order, paradoxically, to create literature in the first place). If Wordsworth and the Romantics sometimes argue for an anti-intellectual (or merely non-intellectual) relationship to nature, they never offer this as a theory of reading, as Keating consistently does.

But many people like misreading “The Tables Turned,” and like their poetry, as the Car Talk guys would say, “unencumbered by the thought process.” There’s a reason there’s no Dead Novelists Society: for poetry, in the public imaginary, is the realm of feeling rather than thinking, and the very epitome of humanistic study. To understand how preposterous and offensive this stipulation is, turn it around. Imagine what would happen if we suddenly insisted that physics professors were ruining the beauty and mystery and wonder of the natural world by forcing students memorize equations. Or if we demanded that the politics department stop teaching courses in political theory.

The resistance to the humanities: In one of its guises, that of Dead Poets Society, it finally comes down to a preference for fans over critics, amateurs over professionals. Everyone engaged in the debates swirling around the humanities, it seems, is willing to let humanists pursue their interests as amateurs, letting “poetry work its magic … in the enchantment of the moment.” Some of those who wish us well—so long as it doesn’t cost them anything, in terms of faculty lines, or course enrollments, or research funding—enjoy a fan’s relationship to the humanities themselves, and at best hope for the same for their students.

Scholars and teachers of the humanities, however: We will insist on being welcomed to the table as professionals.

Dead Poets Society Review

17 Jan 1990

129 minutes

Dead Poets Society

The success at the US box office of Peter Weir's evocative drama about youthful dreams and self-discovery is a tribute to the pulling power of Robin Williams since it is unusual to see a 'quality film' rubbing receipts with comic book heroes and horror fiends.

Those attracted by his participation will not be disappointed, although Williams is in fact not the busiest character in the role of charismatic English teacher John Keating. As the kind of teacher everyone wishes they'd had, inspiring his students with passion and joy, he is the catalyst for the actions of the teenagers he has enthralled. Much of the story's telling devolves on a cast of newcomers (Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Gale Hansen and Josh Charles particularly), acquitting themselves very well as the classmates in a strictly traditional New England private school in 1959 who are moved to dream and to dare by Keating's encouragement.

Williams makes of Keating an immensely sympathetic presence that suffuses the film even when he is off-screen. Renowned for his improvisational flights, his performance here is controlled - warm rather than wacky, stirring rather than wild. His facility at letting rip is used judiciously to marvellous effect in classroom scenes in which he soars: exhorting the boys to tear up their texts, circling a shy student to squeeze a poetic outburst from the startled boy, impersonating John Wayne playing Macbeth.

Spellbound by Keating and on fire to emulate him, a group of the boys form the Dead Poets Society in imitation of a secret club led by their hero in his own schooldays at the academy. The boys' clandestine nocturnal meetings in a cave are innocent enough adventures during which they spout poetry and tackle deep and meaningful matters like girls, booze and life.

Unfortunately the plot takes a bumpy diversion into the anticipated clash with authority, concentrating on the trouble between one of Keating's most promising boys and his ambitious, insensitive father. A tragedy - semaphored way before it finally occurs - leads to hysterical recriminations and reprisals that cruelly chill the film's previously celebratory tone, revived at the last with a corny but spirit-lifting end.

As one would expect from the director of such films as A Picnic At Hanging Rock, Gallipoli and Witness, Peter Weir, accompanied by his regular director of photography, John Seale, distinguishes himself by creating a strong sense of the time, place and people while imbuing even simple acts with beauty and mystery. A long shot of the boys walking in the dark to their secret place, for example, is a magical image of their excitement, fear and high spirits. This film radiates intelligence, humanity and warmth through many such small moments.

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Essay about Dead Poets Society: Film Analysis

Anyone can prepare themselves to become a stronger writer. It takes practice and self motivation to proceed in the process to get better. It’s not easy, but with determination it can be accomplished. In the film, Dead Poets Society, a new English teacher, John Keating, uses atypical methods of teaching to reach out to his students at an all-boys preparatory academy. Through his lessons, his students learned to overcome the pressures from their families and school and tried to pursue their dreams.

In “Part 3” of Cal Newport’s, How to Become A Straight-A Student, Newport provides tips on how students can prepare themselves to write powerful essays. The film can translate well into the book written by Newport because students can use the themes presented in the movie to help them overcome obstacles in the writing process. Writing has roadblocks like life, we have to conquer it to improve. While the objective from Dead Poet’s Society differs from “Part 3” of Cal Newport’s, How to Become a Straight-A Student, it can be implied that the power to becoming a strong writer is to overcome obstacles.

Sometimes it’s hard to keep an open mind for new ideas, but exploring and discovering different perspectives can help benefit the grade you receive on your paper. It will spark the audience’s interest because of the engagement of a divergent outlook. In the film, Keating says, “I stand upon my desk to remind myself… that we must constantly look at things in a different way. The world looks very different from up here… Just when you think you know something you have to look at it in another way… When you read, don’t just consider what the author thinks, you must consider what you think” (Weir, Dead Poets Society).

He stands on the desk to emphasis how looking at things from another viewpoint can change a person’s perspective. There isn’t only one way to look at ideas and objects. For your paper, try and find a unique perspective of your own and write your thesis. If you need help, don’t be afraid to ask. Sometimes a seed is needed to help you get started. Ask for opinions from your friends and professors. As stated in the text, “[They] will help you identify pieces of your structure that are unclear or unnecessary” (Newport 185). A perspective can be compared to a thesis.

It will change and evolve as you continue in the paper-writing process (Newport 157). It’s inevitable, just like how it’s inevitable for perspectives to stay the same. Don’t wait too long to get started, find your own standpoint and just write your thesis. Your thoughts matter. Once a standpoint is found, your voice needs to be heard. Building up the courage to express oneself through words will be beneficial and helpful in the process of becoming a strong writer. In the film, Keating is teaching his students that they do not need to be resigned to what the author thinks.

He tells his students, “You must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it all” (Weir, Dead Poets Society). This quote conveys that it’s best not to wait too long to find the courage to find your own voice and express it. This is similar to “Part 3” when Newport quotes a straight-A student saying, “I don’t believe in sitting in front of a blank screen and just starting to write, hoping it will come to you” (Newport 141). Waiting for ideas to come to you will waste your time.

You have to do whatever it is necessary to get the creative juices flowing. To become a powerful writer, a student must prepare to present their ideas in their own voice. You don’t get better overnight. Newport writes, “the hard truth is that the only way to get better at organizing and presenting your thoughts is through practice” (Newport 175). You get better as you practice. Writing may be intimidating, but taking the time to practice can help you improve. Making the most of the present time can help your paper become extraordinary.

In the film, on the first day of class, Keating takes his students out to have their lesson in the hallway, instructing them to observe the pictures on display because, even though they’ve passed it many times, they haven’t really looked at it. He tells his students, “Seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary” (Weir, Dead Poets Society). His message was to make the most of their lives, leave behind a legacy, because eventually death will come. When you are writing, you should limit your distractions and focus on the task at hand.

Making the most of your time will result in more work being completed. In “Part 3,” Newport states, “The key to effective paper writing is breaking down tasks into manageable units” (Newport 144). He is conveying that breaking down the writing process will be more organized and efficient than rushing to get it done. Once you’re done with the draft of your paper, come back to the thesis. “Don’t be afraid to leave room for ambiguity” (Newport 157). Be vague with the thesis. In life, students may not know how to become extraordinary and it’s okay to not know.

There is a broad list of opportunities. They will get there, but they have to take the steps towards that goal or find a way to get there. Writing a great paper doesn’t come to a person all at once, creating productive steps can help get to that level of work. However, if steps are made and there is no time being spent to complete them, it’s useless. Use your time wisely and your paper can become extraordinary. You don’t need to be a superhero to become a strong writer. The power is already in you, you have to find it and bring it out.

Don’t be afraid to think outside the box for ideas, it will help bring attention to your paper. Once your ideas are found, use your own voice to express it in your writing. You don’t have to be resigned to a certain way of thinking. Make sure to spend time on writing your paper. Ideas will only be ideas if you don’t do the work. It may seem impossible to write an amazing paper right off the bat, but make it possible by practicing. You become a strong writer as you overcome the roadblocks. It’s only impossible if you don’t make it possible.

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Dead Poets Society

By peter weir.

• Dead Poets Society Summary

In 1959, shy Todd Anderson begins his senior year of high school at elite boarding school Welton Academy, a prep school in the Northeastern United States. One of the most promising students at Welton, Neil Perry , is assigned as Todd's roommate and Todd is quickly initiated into Perry's circle of friends, including mischievous Charlie Dalton , romantic Knox Overstreet , high-flying overachiever Richard Cameron and best friends Gerard Pitts and Steven Meeks. On the first day of classes they are surprised to find that their new English teacher, Mr. Keating , is both entertaining and unorthodox, himself a Welton alumnus whose innovation in the classroom brings English class alive. He encourages his students to make their lives extraordinary and summarizes this sentiment with extorting them in Latin "carpe diem" (seize the day). Unfortunately this is in direct contrast to the ethos of the school where living a traditional and conformist life is preferred to living an extraordinary one.

John Keating's inspirational classes also include standing on his desk at the front of the classroom as an illustration to his students that they should try to look at life from a different perspective, and telling them to rip out the introduction section of their poetry books which explains a mathematical formula used to rate poetry. He also encourages them to create their own style of walking across the courtyard to encourage them to be individuals. Individuality is the antithesis of Welton's ethos, and not surprisingly, his teaching methods come to the attention of Gale Nolan, the strict and archaic headmaster.

Neil Perry discovers that Mr. Keating was once a member of the secret and unsanctioned "Dead Poets' Society" when he was a student at Welton. Neil restarts the club and each night he and his friends leave campus without permission and go to a cave where they read poetry, and write and recite their own compositions as well. As the school year goes on, Mr. Keating's classes and their involvement with the Club continue to inspire them to live life on their own terms; Knox Overstreet pursues Chris Noel, a girl who is dating a football player and whose family is friends with his. Neil Perry discovers a passion for acting and wins the lead role in a local production of A Midsummer Night's Dream , despite the fact that his cold and domineering father wants him to attend medical school not pursue a carter in the theater. Mr. Keating also helps Todd come out of his shell and takes him through an exercise in self-expression to help him realize his potential. The exercise culminates with Todd spontaneously composing a poem in front of the class.

Unfortunately, Charlie Dalton's inspiration leads him to go too far, and he publishes an article in the school newspaper under the byline of the Dead Poets Society , demanding that girls be accepted to Welton. Headmaster Nolan uses corporal punishment to try to force Charlie to tell him who else is a member of the club, but he refuses. Nolan also warns Keating that he must discourage his students from questioning authority or else face consequences of his own.

Neil's father discovers he is performing in the play and demands that he quit on the eve of his first performance. Neil is devastated and turns to Keating for advice; his teacher advises him to stand his ground and stand up to his father to demonstrate his seriousness about acting. The following day Keating asks if he has spoken to his father and Neil lies, saying that he had, and that he will be permitted to pursue an acting career provided his schoolwork does not suffer. The lie is discovered when Neil's father unexpectedly appears at the performance, taking his son home and then forcing him to go to military school so that he can go to Harvard and study medicine. Terrified of his father and at a loss for what to do, Neil commits suicide.

Gale Nolan, the headmaster, begins an investigation into the suicide at the request of the Perry family. Attempting to escape punishment for his own membership in the Dead Poet's Society, Richard Cameron tells Nolan that Neil's death is entirely Keating's fault. He names Overstreet, Meeks, Pitts, Anderson, Dalton and Perry as his fellow members. Charlie confronts him, but Cameron urges the others to put the blame on Mr. Keating. Charlie refuses and punches Cameron, which causes him to be expelled. Each of the boys is called to Nolan's office to sign a letter attesting that Cameron's version of events is true. When it is Todd's turn he does not want to sign but does so when he sees that the others have signed already.

Keating is fired and Nolan takes over teaching his class. Keating interrupts class to collect some personal possessions from his desk, and before he leaves Todd stands on his desk and salutes Keating with the words "Captain! My Captain!" Knox, Steven, Gerard and over half the class does the same. Todd shouts that they were forced to sign the letter and that Neil's death was not his fault. Deeply touched by this gesture, Keating thanks them.

Dead Poets Society Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Dead Poets Society is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What’s the theme of dead poets society rip it out

Do you mean the scene where Keeting asks his class to rip out the Pritchard text? He wants them to avoid conformity by ripping a text that treats poetry like a math equation.

Explore Keating's influence on his students and how his encouragement of originality and "carpe diem" affect them.

I can't write your essay for you but can make a general comment. One of Keating’s main, overarching lessons for the boys is the idea of “seizing the day”—that is, making the most of the time they have now and taking advantage of the opportunities...

According to Pitts, all of the girls go for “jerks”. Do you agree with his assessment? Why or why not?

Well, this is a pretty subjective answer from personal experience. Many many years ago I was captain of the chess team in high school. Lets just say girls were not clamouring to wear my jacket. The hockey players,they used to throw pucks at our...

Study Guide for Dead Poets Society

Dead Poets Society study guide contains a biography of director Peter Weir, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Dead Poets Society
• Character List
• Director's Influence

Essays for Dead Poets Society

Dead Poets Society literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of the film Dead Poets Society directed by Peter Weir.

• Authority Against Individualism: Dead Poets Society and The Rabbits
• Dead Poets Society: The Powerful Thought of Individuality
• Identity in Dead Poets Society and Frost's Poetry
• Exploring Transitions: Educating Rita and Dead Poets Society

Wikipedia Entries for Dead Poets Society

• Introduction

Dead Poets Society

N. h. kleinbaum, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

The novel is set in 1959 at the prestigious Welton Academy, a Vermont boarding school. As the school year begins, we meet Todd Anderson , a shy new student who’s transferred from another school, as well as Neil Perry , Richard Cameron , and Charlie Dalton —all junior-year students. Neil Perry is a likable, kind student, and is Todd’s roommate; Neil is terrified of his own father, Mr. Perry , who insists that Neil must study chemistry, go to Harvard, and become a doctor. Richard Cameron is an uptight, conforming student who hates breaking rules; Charlie Dalton, on the other hand, is an easygoing, rebellious student who loves breaking rules.

Another Welton student and friend of Neil’s, Knox Overstreet , goes to have dinner with some family friends, the Danburrys. During dinner, he meets Chris Noel , the beautiful girlfriend of Chet Danburry , the Danburrys’ son. Knox is instantly smitten, but doesn’t know what to do about his love.

Classes begin at Welton. Most of the teachers are extremely rigorous and controlling. However, there’s a new English teacher at school, John Keating , who is different. Keating immediately impresses his students with his charismatic, energetic lectures—in the first of which he stands on his desk . While other teachers force students to do homework and obey them at all times, Keating begins the year by talking about “Carpe Diem,” the idea that humans should “seize the day”—i.e., make the most of life while they’re alive. This year, Keating promises, he wants to teach his students how to be extraordinary instead of simply following the rules. Keating’s unusual teaching methods draw some attention from his colleagues, but because he’s an intelligent, likable man, he stays in the good graces of the Welton headmaster, Gale Nolan .

Neil tries to engage with Todd and become his friend, but Todd is too shy and reserved. Things begin to change when Neil comes across an old yearbook in which he learns that John Keating was once a student at Welton; during that time, Keating was a member of a club called the Dead Poets Society. When Neil and his friends ask Keating about the Dead Poets, Keating explains that the Dead Poets met in a cave near Welton, read poetry, and celebrated life. Later, Neil finds that someone, presumably Keating, has put an old poetry anthology marked “Dead Poets” in his room. Neil convinces his friends, including Knox, Cameron, Charlie, and Todd, to go to the cave, and together they read from the poetry anthology, gradually becoming transfixed by the poems’ beauty.

In class, Keating asks his students to compose poems. Todd is at first unable to write anything that he feels comfortable reading in from of the other students, but with Keating’s encouragement, he improvises a brilliant poem about Keating’s hero, Walt Whitman. Afterwards, Todd begins to open up, both with his classmates and with Keating. He admits to Neil that he feels that his parents don’t love him—they’re incredibly hard on him, and clearly prefer his older sibling. Neil is sympathetic to Todd’s problems, since they echo his own. Keating’s lessons also inspire Neil to try out for a local production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream –to his delight, he gets the lead part of Puck.

The students’ attempts to “seize the day,” inspired by Keating, become increasingly reckless and foolish. Charlie Dalton pens an article in the school paper in which he claims that women should be admitted to Welton, and signs it “The Dead Poets.” To protect his classmates, Charlie comes forward and admits he wrote the article—he’s given corporal punishment by Nolan, but doesn’t tell Nolan anything about the Dead Poets Society. Meanwhile, Knox is invited to a party with Chris and Chet—at the party, he gets very drunk and, telling himself that he’s just “seizing the day,” he touches Chris’s breasts, infuriating Chet. In response to his students’ wild actions, and the suspicion he’s been getting from Nolan, Keating tries to teach his students how to be realistic, “survive” college, and bluff their ways through essays about horrible books that aren’t worth reading.

Mr. Perry finds out that Neil is going to be in A Midsummer Night’s Dream , and furiously forbids him from performing in the play. Neil, unsure what to do, goes to Keating for advice. Keating advises Neil to talk to his father and show him how passionate he is about acting. Neil can’t bring himself to talk to his father, but tells Keating that Mr. Perry gave him permission to perform after all.

Knox goes to Chris’s school and reads her a poem he wrote for her, in which he professes his love. Later, Chris visits Knox at Welton and warns him that Chet is going to kill him for what he’s done. Knox begs Chris to go see A Midsummer Night’s Dream with him—if she doesn’t have a good time, he’ll never try to see her again. Reluctantly, Chris agrees.

Chris, Knox, Keating, and the other Dead Poets go to see Neil in A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Neil is spectacular as Puck, to everyone’s delight, especially Todd. Chris begins to develop feelings for Knox during the performance—and later that night, she kisses Knox. After the show, however, Mr. Perry appears to confront Neil. He brings Neil home and tells him that he’ll be going to a rigorous military academy from now on—clearly, Welton is distracting him from his “goals” of being a doctor. Neil is so upset by this news that, late at night, he shoots himself with his father’s revolver.

In the aftermath of Neil’s suicide, there’s an investigation, at Mr. Perry’s request, into the matter. Cameron betrays the Dead Poets by going to Nolan and telling him about the Dead Poets Society. Nolan uses Cameron’s information to cast Keating as a scapegoat—by blaming Keating for “corrupting” Neil with talk of freedom and individuality, Nolan hopes to avoid a full-scale scandal with Welton’s wealthy alumni donors.

One by one, the students are brought into Nolan’s office and forced to sign a document stating that Keating corrupted them with his free-thinking lessons, and thereby compelled Neil to commit suicide. While most of the Dead Poets sign the document, Todd refuses to do so—and Nolan places him under strict probation for refusing to go along. In spite of Todd’s loyalty, Keating is fired from Welton and essentially barred from ever teaching again.

In the final chapter, the students file into English class, now being taught by the dull Headmaster Nolan himself. In the middle of the lesson, Keating walks in to pick up his personal items. While Keating gathers his things, Todd runs up to him, explaining that Nolan forced the students to sign the document that’s gotten Keating fired. Keating smiles and nods, showing that he understands. Todd stands on his desk, just as Keating did during his first lesson at Welton. Slowly, and despite Nolan’s cries to stop, the other students join Todd in an inspiring show of solidarity with Keating.

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Dead Poets Society Review

Updated 22 July 2022

Subject Movies

Downloads 33

Category Entertainment

Topic Dead Poets Society ,  Movie Review ,  Movie Summary

Tom Schulman's screenplay

Thomas H. Schulman is an American screenwriter, best known for the film Dead Poets Society. The story of this film is based on Schulman's time at the college-preparatory day school Montgomery Bell Academy. He spent his teenage years as an aspiring writer, but was soon turned down. However, this experience would be the catalyst for his success, and the screenplay was produced.

The story of Dead Poets Society

Follows a group of young men as they stand up to a bully and stand up for a teacher. The film received a lot of praise after its release in 2016, but it was a tough time for Schulman, who wrote the screenplay more than twenty years ago. In the era of blockbusters and over-the-top villains, Dead Poets Society was a rare success.

Originally a philosopher, Schulman

Earned a B.A. in philosophy from Vanderbilt University. He then attended the USC Film School but dropped out after just two semesters. After studying philosophy and theatre, Schulman worked in various theaters and educational films. In 1989, he sold his screenplay to Dead Poets Society for $1.5 million. The film became one of the biggest hits of that decade.

Peter Weir's direction

In this Dead Poets Society review, we'll take a closer look at Weir's vision for this film, which is reminiscent of his previous anti-war epic, "Gallipoli." Weir's directorial style is distinctly Australian, with its echoed hallways, grand chapels, and tiny, fusty classrooms. Weir's rage against injustice is almost palpable, and his cinematography reflects this.

Director Peter Weir

Was the perfect choice for this script. He and screenwriter Chuck Schulman worked together to reimagine the setting, including a boarding school. And the director had a unique relationship with the actors, which was far from typical Hollywood. For instance, he had the actors live in a dorm so as to simulate the experience of boarding school. To get them into the right mindset, Weir had them get to know 1950s music, as if they were the characters in a reimagined 1950s world. Moreover, Weir received an Academy Award nomination for this film in 1990.

The film is a coming-of-age drama

Which will captivate you from the very start. You'll want to stay awake until the end to absorb all that Weir has to offer. Although the movie was shot in Middletown, Delaware, the story itself takes place in Vermont. The film is a great example of Weir's mastery of storytelling. So, if you're looking for an inspiring film, Dead Poets Society is the one for you.

The film's characters

While many English professors may not like Dead Poets Society, literature teachers will absolutely love it. This film shows the importance of teaching the humanities, and the charismatic teacher, Mr. Keating, is a breath of fresh air. While he may be a bit cliched, his approach to teaching is refreshing. Even his student's reactions to him are worth the read. Read on to discover why this movie is so popular with English teachers.

The film's main character, Todd Anderson

Undergoes a significant change in his character during the course of the story. He had to live up to the reputation of his older brother, Neil, and was intimidated to read aloud. To overcome this, Todd studied harder and became a member of the Dead Poets Society. Neil Perry, a member of the society, is the reason Todd was inspired to join. Todd sat next to Neil at meetings and shared cigars with his friends. In the night before the play, Todd reads a personal poem in his bedroom.

A Dead Poets Society review is incomplete without addressing the themes of the film. The themes of the film range from romantic and traditional mentality to carpe diem. It is one of the best films of the decade, and features Robin Williams and Robert Sean Leonard as two of its most talented actors. While this film does have some predictable themes, it is definitely worth checking out if you are looking for a fun and entertaining movie.

The film has won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay

And it was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director. Moreover, it was nominated for Best Actor, so its themes are universal. The film demonstrates how important it is to question the status quo, especially when it comes to society. Progress never comes without questioning and seeking knowledge. The movie also deals with the complex relationship between teachers and their students, and how this affects that relationship.

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Review/Film; Shaking Up a Boys' School With Poetry

By Vincent Canby

• June 2, 1989

The time is 1959 and the place is the Welton Academy in Vermont. Welton is one of those expensive, tradition-bound boys' preparatory schools somewhat more beloved in, and more significant to, English literature than American.

This being 1959, Welton has not yet been pressured into accepting young women or blacks. Its world is insular, that of the privileged white male who, if he is not already a scion of Old Money, will probably marry it. Into this rarefied atmosphere comes John Keating (Robin Williams), himself a Welton alumnus, who returns to teach English and to shake up the old school with his enthusiasm for poetry and his unconventional teaching methods.

One of the major problems with ''Dead Poets Society,'' Peter Weir's dim, sad new movie, is that although John Keating is the most vivid, most complex character in it, he is not around long enough. He is really no more than the catalyst who brings about events over which he has no control.

''Dead Poets Society,'' which opens today at Cinema 1 and other theaters, is far less about Keating than about a handful of impressionable boys who become bewitched by Keating's exuberant assaults on the order of academe.

They include Neil Perry (Robert Sean Leonard), a hard-working honors student who dreams of becoming an actor though his father insists that he go to Harvard to study medicine. Todd Anderson (Ethan Hawke) is so shy that he is frozen with fear when required to speak in front of the other students. Charlie Dalton (Gale Hansen) has the makings of a true rebel and poet.

At Keating's first class of the new semester, he orders his students to tear out the preface in their poetry anthology. The offending pages suggest that the value of poetry can be measured in much the same way as the area of a rectangle.

Keating's credo: ''Carpe diem!'' (''Seize the day!''), because tomorrow we will all be food for worms. ''We don't read and write poetry because it is cute, but because it is full of the passion of life.''

He mixes great swatches of Whitman with imitations of Marlon Brando and John Wayne. He recalls that when he was a boy, ''I was the intellectual of 98-pound weaklings. I'd go to the beach and people would kick copies of Byron in my face.''

He drills his students mercilessly until each begins to perceive that, only by being out of step with others, will he have a chance to realize himself. With his encouragement, they revive a clandestine campus group of which Keating had been a founding member, the Dead Poets Society. After hours, the members meet in a nearby cave, tell ghost stories, read Tennyson aloud and, in one case, play the saxophone.

In Mr. Williams's Keating, the movie has an authentic approximation of the kind of teacher who not only instructs, but also changes his students' lives. He is not, unfortunately, the center of Tom Schulman's screenplay, which moves with such deliberate predictability that one must walk very slowly not to walk ahead of it.

One would have to have been raised in a space station not to know that Keating must come into conflict with the other masters, and that one of his students will take his teachings to some fatal length. Even worse, Mr. Schulman and Mr. Weir seem to accept the Keating character at romantic face value. In allowing him to remain a sort of hip Mr. Chips, they leave unexplored the contradictory nature of his responsibilities. In fact, the Keating character is far more culpable than either he or the movie realizes.

In this fashion, the movie undercuts Mr. Williams's exceptionally fine performance, making the character seem more of a dubious fool than is probably intended.

Mr. Weir (''Picnic at Hanging Rock,'' ''The Year of Living Dangerously'' and ''Witness,'' among others) obtains some very good performances from the younger actors, particularly from Mr. Leonard, and from Norman Lloyd, who plays the headmaster.

Yet the director cannot resist tarting up the movie with the fancified effects that pass for art: broad, eerie shots of birds taking off (or landing), night scenes prettily lighted from sources of illumination that must have been provided by the gods, along with scenes from an amateur production of ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' in which Puck (for reasons that have more to do with the movie than the play) wears Christ's crown of thorns.

Like that crown, the movie is too heavy for its own good.

''Dead Poets Society,'' which has been rated PG (''Parental Guidance Suggested''), would probably bore and confuse very young audiences. Subversive Verse DEAD POETS SOCIETY, directed by Peter Weir; written by Tom Schulman; director of photography, John Seale; edited by William Anderson; music by Maurice Jarre; production designer, Wendy Stites; produced by Steven Haft, Paul Junger Witt and Tony Thomas; released by Touchstone Pictures. At Cinema 1, Third Avenue and 60th Street, and other theaters. Running time: 124 minutes. This film is rated PG. John Keating ... Robin Williams Neil Perry ... Robert Sean Leonard Todd Anderson ... Ethan Hawke Knox Overstreet ... Josh Charles Charlie Dalton ... Gale Hansen Mr. Nolan ... Norman Lloyd Richard Cameron ... Dylan Kussman Steven Meeks ... Allelon Ruggiero

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Dead poets society, common sense media reviewers.

Inspiring, intense story of a teacher and his students.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Lots of nuggets of wisdom mostly spoken by Profess

Almost goes without saying that kids pushed like c

One of the boys commits suicide off-screen via gun

One of the teens shows a (somewhat obscured) Playb

Kids call Welton school "Hell-ton" frequ

Sunmaid Raisins make a cameo.

Period smoking -- lots of it. Both pipes and cigar

Parents need to know that Dead Poets Society has very uplifting messages especially for teens about seizing the day and embracing poetry as a way toward thinking for yourself and positive self-expression. But it also deals with the suicide of one of the main characters (the gunshot isn't shown, but the…

Positive Messages

Lots of nuggets of wisdom mostly spoken by Professor Keating: Think for yourselves, savor words and language, "words and language can change the world," and you should constantly look at things in a different way. Major themes include compassion and integrity.

Positive Role Models

Almost goes without saying that kids pushed like crazy to succeed will rebel. The boys here smoke quite a bit and sneak out of the school repeatedly, but they sneak out to read poetry and bond. One boy lies to his seemingly heartless father so he can perform in a play. Professor Keating clearly cares a lot about his students. Authority figures in the school stoop to scapegoating one teacher and pitting students against him in order to keep order after a tragedy.

Violence & Scariness

One of the boys commits suicide off-screen via gun shot; parents are shown afterward hysterical as they hold him. One boy gets beaten up, his nose bloodied. One character says of his beau,"if I don't have Chris I'm going to kill myself." One student gets paddled by headmaster as punishment.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

One of the teens shows a (somewhat obscured) Playboy centerfold, plus a few jokes about virginity, and teen couples kissing passionately at a party.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Kids call Welton school "Hell-ton" frequently. "S--t" is said about a half dozen times, plus a smattering of "damn," "Goddamnit," and "Jesus."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Drinking, drugs & smoking.

Period smoking -- lots of it. Both pipes and cigarettes smoked by adults and snuck by teens. A high school party includes plenty of drinking -- Knox does whiskey shots with new acquaintances.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Dead Poets Society has very uplifting messages especially for teens about seizing the day and embracing poetry as a way toward thinking for yourself and positive self-expression. But it also deals with the suicide of one of the main characters (the gunshot isn't shown, but the parents are shown holding their son afterward, hysterical). Everyone smokes a lot (mostly a reflection of the time mixed with teen rebellion) and one main character drinks shots at a high school party. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (20)
• Kids say (59)

Based on 20 parent reviews

Common themes

What's the story.

In DEAD POETS SOCIETY, the teens attending one of the most prestigious preparatory schools in the country aren't prepared for the new English teacher Mr. Keating ( Robin Williams ). He encourages these future doctors and lawyers with pushy parents to think for themselves and "seize the day!" He also subtly encourages the boys to form the Dead Poets Society. They sneak out at night repeatedly to read poetry and bond over girls they like and the pressures they face. It's all healthy fun until Charlie (Gale Hansen) taunts the school with hints of their activities, leading to a full inquiry. But that's only the start of the trouble Mr. Keating and the Dead Poets Society faces.

Is It Any Good?

Older kids fall hard for this stirring coming-of-age drama; they love the way it challenges them to think for themselves. The story also tugs at their heartstrings. They get to know the boys -- their loves, their goals, and their fears. They root for the characters, wanting them to achieve their dreams (one boy wants to play the sax, another wants to become an actor).

Despite Robin William's fine (if a tad cloying) performance, Dead Poets Society belongs to the boys, and the ensemble cast of young male actors (including Ethan Hawke , Josh Charles , and Robert Sean Leonard ) is up to the task. The movie also has a spell-casting ambiance, especially in the cave scenes.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how poetry is explained and used in Dead Poets Society . Did this movie inspire you to read more, be more creative, or even "seize the day"?

Which movies inspire you? Why? What about teachers?

Families can also talk about Neil, his oppressive father, and his irreversible decision. What help is out there for those contemplating the same actions? What are the warning signs that someone needs help?

How do the characters in Dead Poets Society demonstrate compassion and integrity ? Why are these important character strengths ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : June 9, 1989
• On DVD or streaming : March 4, 2002
• Cast : Dylan Kussman , Ethan Hawke , Robin Williams
• Director : Peter Weir
• Studio : Touchstone Pictures
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Friendship , High School
• Character Strengths : Compassion , Integrity
• Run time : 128 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG
• MPAA explanation : emotional intensity
• Last updated : May 3, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Scent of a Woman

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Best high school movies, drama movies that tug at the heartstrings, related topics.

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Movie Review — Transcendentalism In Dead Poets Society

Transcendentalism in Dead Poets Society

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12.14: Sample Student Literary Analysis Essays

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• Page ID 40514

• Heather Ringo & Athena Kashyap
• City College of San Francisco via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative

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The following examples are essays where student writers focused on close-reading a literary work.

While reading these examples, ask yourself the following questions:

• What is the essay's thesis statement, and how do you know it is the thesis statement?
• What is the main idea or topic sentence of each body paragraph, and how does it relate back to the thesis statement?
• Where and how does each essay use evidence (quotes or paraphrase from the literature)?
• What are some of the literary devices or structures the essays analyze or discuss?
• How does each author structure their conclusion, and how does their conclusion differ from their introduction?

Example 1: Poetry

Victoria Morillo

Instructor Heather Ringo

3 August 2022

How Nguyen’s Structure Solidifies the Impact of Sexual Violence in “The Study”

Stripped of innocence, your body taken from you. No matter how much you try to block out the instance in which these two things occurred, memories surface and come back to haunt you. How does a person, a young boy , cope with an event that forever changes his life? Hieu Minh Nguyen deconstructs this very way in which an act of sexual violence affects a survivor. In his poem, “The Study,” the poem's speaker recounts the year in which his molestation took place, describing how his memory filters in and out. Throughout the poem, Nguyen writes in free verse, permitting a structural liberation to become the foundation for his message to shine through. While he moves the readers with this poignant narrative, Nguyen effectively conveys the resulting internal struggles of feeling alone and unseen.

The speaker recalls his experience with such painful memory through the use of specific punctuation choices. Just by looking at the poem, we see that the first period doesn’t appear until line 14. It finally comes after the speaker reveals to his readers the possible, central purpose for writing this poem: the speaker's molestation. In the first half, the poem makes use of commas, em dashes, and colons, which lends itself to the idea of the speaker stringing along all of these details to make sense of this time in his life. If reading the poem following the conventions of punctuation, a sense of urgency is present here, as well. This is exemplified by the lack of periods to finalize a thought; and instead, Nguyen uses other punctuation marks to connect them. Serving as another connector of thoughts, the two em dashes give emphasis to the role memory plays when the speaker discusses how “no one [had] a face” during that time (Nguyen 9-11). He speaks in this urgent manner until the 14th line, and when he finally gets it off his chest, the pace of the poem changes, as does the more frequent use of the period. This stream-of-consciousness-like section when juxtaposed with the latter half of the poem, causes readers to slow down and pay attention to the details. It also splits the poem in two: a section that talks of the fogginess of memory then transitions into one that remembers it all.

In tandem with the fluctuating nature of memory, the utilization of line breaks and word choice help reflect the damage the molestation has had. Within the first couple of lines of the poem, the poem demands the readers’ attention when the line breaks from “floating” to “dead” as the speaker describes his memory of Little Billy (Nguyen 1-4). This line break averts the readers’ expectation of the direction of the narrative and immediately shifts the tone of the poem. The break also speaks to the effect his trauma has ingrained in him and how “[f]or the longest time,” his only memory of that year revolves around an image of a boy’s death. In a way, the speaker sees himself in Little Billy; or perhaps, he’s representative of the tragic death of his boyhood, how the speaker felt so “dead” after enduring such a traumatic experience, even referring to himself as a “ghost” that he tries to evict from his conscience (Nguyen 24). The feeling that a part of him has died is solidified at the very end of the poem when the speaker describes himself as a nine-year-old boy who’s been “fossilized,” forever changed by this act (Nguyen 29). By choosing words associated with permanence and death, the speaker tries to recreate the atmosphere (for which he felt trapped in) in order for readers to understand the loneliness that came as a result of his trauma. With the assistance of line breaks, more attention is drawn to the speaker's words, intensifying their importance, and demanding to be felt by the readers.

Most importantly, the speaker expresses eloquently, and so heartbreakingly, about the effect sexual violence has on a person. Perhaps what seems to be the most frustrating are the people who fail to believe survivors of these types of crimes. This is evident when he describes “how angry” the tenants were when they filled the pool with cement (Nguyen 4). They seem to represent how people in the speaker's life were dismissive of his assault and who viewed his tragedy as a nuisance of some sorts. This sentiment is bookended when he says, “They say, give us details , so I give them my body. / They say, give us proof , so I give them my body,” (Nguyen 25-26). The repetition of these two lines reinforces the feeling many feel in these scenarios, as they’re often left to deal with trying to make people believe them, or to even see them.

It’s important to recognize how the structure of this poem gives the speaker space to express the pain he’s had to carry for so long. As a characteristic of free verse, the poem doesn’t follow any structured rhyme scheme or meter; which in turn, allows him to not have any constraints in telling his story the way he wants to. The speaker has the freedom to display his experience in a way that evades predictability and engenders authenticity of a story very personal to him. As readers, we abandon anticipating the next rhyme, and instead focus our attention to the other ways, like his punctuation or word choice, in which he effectively tells his story. The speaker recognizes that some part of him no longer belongs to himself, but by writing “The Study,” he shows other survivors that they’re not alone and encourages hope that eventually, they will be freed from the shackles of sexual violence.

Works Cited

Nguyen, Hieu Minh. “The Study” Poets.Org. Academy of American Poets, Coffee House Press, 2018, https://poets.org/poem/study-0 .

Example 2: Fiction

Todd Goodwin

Professor Stan Matyshak

Advanced Expository Writing

Sept. 17, 20—

Poe’s “Usher”: A Mirror of the Fall of the House of Humanity

Right from the outset of the grim story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Edgar Allan Poe enmeshes us in a dark, gloomy, hopeless world, alienating his characters and the reader from any sort of physical or psychological norm where such values as hope and happiness could possibly exist. He fatalistically tells the story of how a man (the narrator) comes from the outside world of hope, religion, and everyday society and tries to bring some kind of redeeming happiness to his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher, who not only has physically and psychologically wasted away but is entrapped in a dilapidated house of ever-looming terror with an emaciated and deranged twin sister. Roderick Usher embodies the wasting away of what once was vibrant and alive, and his house of “insufferable gloom” (273), which contains his morbid sister, seems to mirror or reflect this fear of death and annihilation that he most horribly endures. A close reading of the story reveals that Poe uses mirror images, or reflections, to contribute to the fatalistic theme of “Usher”: each reflection serves to intensify an already prevalent tone of hopelessness, darkness, and fatalism.

It could be argued that the house of Roderick Usher is a “house of mirrors,” whose unpleasant and grim reflections create a dark and hopeless setting. For example, the narrator first approaches “the melancholy house of Usher on a dark and soundless day,” and finds a building which causes him a “sense of insufferable gloom,” which “pervades his spirit and causes an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart, an undiscerned dreariness of thought” (273). The narrator then optimistically states: “I reflected that a mere different arrangement of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression” (274). But the narrator then sees the reflection of the house in the tarn and experiences a “shudder even more thrilling than before” (274). Thus the reader begins to realize that the narrator cannot change or stop the impending doom that will befall the house of Usher, and maybe humanity. The story cleverly plays with the word reflection : the narrator sees a physical reflection that leads him to a mental reflection about Usher’s surroundings.

The narrator’s disillusionment by such grim reflection continues in the story. For example, he describes Roderick Usher’s face as distinct with signs of old strength but lost vigor: the remains of what used to be. He describes the house as a once happy and vibrant place, which, like Roderick, lost its vitality. Also, the narrator describes Usher’s hair as growing wild on his rather obtrusive head, which directly mirrors the eerie moss and straw covering the outside of the house. The narrator continually longs to see these bleak reflections as a dream, for he states: “Shaking off from my spirit what must have been a dream, I scanned more narrowly the real aspect of the building” (276). He does not want to face the reality that Usher and his home are doomed to fall, regardless of what he does.

Although there are almost countless examples of these mirror images, two others stand out as important. First, Roderick and his sister, Madeline, are twins. The narrator aptly states just as he and Roderick are entombing Madeline that there is “a striking similitude between brother and sister” (288). Indeed, they are mirror images of each other. Madeline is fading away psychologically and physically, and Roderick is not too far behind! The reflection of “doom” that these two share helps intensify and symbolize the hopelessness of the entire situation; thus, they further develop the fatalistic theme. Second, in the climactic scene where Madeline has been mistakenly entombed alive, there is a pairing of images and sounds as the narrator tries to calm Roderick by reading him a romance story. Events in the story simultaneously unfold with events of the sister escaping her tomb. In the story, the hero breaks out of the coffin. Then, in the story, the dragon’s shriek as he is slain parallels Madeline’s shriek. Finally, the story tells of the clangor of a shield, matched by the sister’s clanging along a metal passageway. As the suspense reaches its climax, Roderick shrieks his last words to his “friend,” the narrator: “Madman! I tell you that she now stands without the door” (296).

Roderick, who slowly falls into insanity, ironically calls the narrator the “Madman.” We are left to reflect on what Poe means by this ironic twist. Poe’s bleak and dark imagery, and his use of mirror reflections, seem only to intensify the hopelessness of “Usher.” We can plausibly conclude that, indeed, the narrator is the “Madman,” for he comes from everyday society, which is a place where hope and faith exist. Poe would probably argue that such a place is opposite to the world of Usher because a world where death is inevitable could not possibly hold such positive values. Therefore, just as Roderick mirrors his sister, the reflection in the tarn mirrors the dilapidation of the house, and the story mirrors the final actions before the death of Usher. “The Fall of the House of Usher” reflects Poe’s view that humanity is hopelessly doomed.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Fall of the House of Usher.” 1839. Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library . 1995. Web. 1 July 2012. < http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PoeFall.html >.

Example 3: Poetry

Amy Chisnell

Professor Laura Neary

Writing and Literature

April 17, 20—

Don’t Listen to the Egg!: A Close Reading of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”

“You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir,” said Alice. “Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called ‘Jabberwocky’?”

“Let’s hear it,” said Humpty Dumpty. “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.” (Carroll 164)

In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass , Humpty Dumpty confidently translates (to a not so confident Alice) the complicated language of the poem “Jabberwocky.” The words of the poem, though nonsense, aptly tell the story of the slaying of the Jabberwock. Upon finding “Jabberwocky” on a table in the looking-glass room, Alice is confused by the strange words. She is quite certain that “ somebody killed something ,” but she does not understand much more than that. When later she encounters Humpty Dumpty, she seizes the opportunity at having the knowledgeable egg interpret—or translate—the poem. Since Humpty Dumpty professes to be able to “make a word work” for him, he is quick to agree. Thus he acts like a New Critic who interprets the poem by performing a close reading of it. Through Humpty’s interpretation of the first stanza, however, we see the poem’s deeper comment concerning the practice of interpreting poetry and literature in general—that strict analytical translation destroys the beauty of a poem. In fact, Humpty Dumpty commits the “heresy of paraphrase,” for he fails to understand that meaning cannot be separated from the form or structure of the literary work.

Of the 71 words found in “Jabberwocky,” 43 have no known meaning. They are simply nonsense. Yet through this nonsensical language, the poem manages not only to tell a story but also gives the reader a sense of setting and characterization. One feels, rather than concretely knows, that the setting is dark, wooded, and frightening. The characters, such as the Jubjub bird, the Bandersnatch, and the doomed Jabberwock, also appear in the reader’s head, even though they will not be found in the local zoo. Even though most of the words are not real, the reader is able to understand what goes on because he or she is given free license to imagine what the words denote and connote. Simply, the poem’s nonsense words are the meaning.

Therefore, when Humpty interprets “Jabberwocky” for Alice, he is not doing her any favors, for he actually misreads the poem. Although the poem in its original is constructed from nonsense words, by the time Humpty is done interpreting it, it truly does not make any sense. The first stanza of the original poem is as follows:

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;

All mimsy were the borogroves,

An the mome raths outgrabe. (Carroll 164)

If we replace, however, the nonsense words of “Jabberwocky” with Humpty’s translated words, the effect would be something like this:

’Twas four o’clock in the afternoon, and the lithe and slimy badger-lizard-corkscrew creatures

Did go round and round and make holes in the grass-plot round the sun-dial:

All flimsy and miserable were the shabby-looking birds

with mop feathers,

And the lost green pigs bellowed-sneezed-whistled.

By translating the poem in such a way, Humpty removes the charm or essence—and the beauty, grace, and rhythm—from the poem. The poetry is sacrificed for meaning. Humpty Dumpty commits the heresy of paraphrase. As Cleanth Brooks argues, “The structure of a poem resembles that of a ballet or musical composition. It is a pattern of resolutions and balances and harmonizations” (203). When the poem is left as nonsense, the reader can easily imagine what a “slithy tove” might be, but when Humpty tells us what it is, he takes that imaginative license away from the reader. The beauty (if that is the proper word) of “Jabberwocky” is in not knowing what the words mean, and yet understanding. By translating the poem, Humpty takes that privilege from the reader. In addition, Humpty fails to recognize that meaning cannot be separated from the structure itself: the nonsense poem reflects this literally—it means “nothing” and achieves this meaning by using “nonsense” words.

Furthermore, the nonsense words Carroll chooses to use in “Jabberwocky” have a magical effect upon the reader; the shadowy sound of the words create the atmosphere, which may be described as a trance-like mood. When Alice first reads the poem, she says it seems to fill her head “with ideas.” The strange-sounding words in the original poem do give one ideas. Why is this? Even though the reader has never heard these words before, he or she is instantly aware of the murky, mysterious mood they set. In other words, diction operates not on the denotative level (the dictionary meaning) but on the connotative level (the emotion(s) they evoke). Thus “Jabberwocky” creates a shadowy mood, and the nonsense words are instrumental in creating this mood. Carroll could not have simply used any nonsense words.

For example, let us change the “dark,” “ominous” words of the first stanza to “lighter,” more “comic” words:

’Twas mearly, and the churly pells

Did bimble and ringle in the tink;

All timpy were the brimbledimps,

And the bip plips outlink.

Shifting the sounds of the words from dark to light merely takes a shift in thought. To create a specific mood using nonsense words, one must create new words from old words that convey the desired mood. In “Jabberwocky,” Carroll mixes “slimy,” a grim idea, “lithe,” a pliable image, to get a new adjective: “slithy” (a portmanteau word). In this translation, brighter words were used to get a lighter effect. “Mearly” is a combination of “morning” and “early,” and “ringle” is a blend of “ring” and "dingle.” The point is that “Jabberwocky’s” nonsense words are created specifically to convey this shadowy or mysterious mood and are integral to the “meaning.”

Consequently, Humpty’s rendering of the poem leaves the reader with a completely different feeling than does the original poem, which provided us with a sense of ethereal mystery, of a dark and foreign land with exotic creatures and fantastic settings. The mysteriousness is destroyed by Humpty’s literal paraphrase of the creatures and the setting; by doing so, he has taken the beauty away from the poem in his attempt to understand it. He has committed the heresy of paraphrase: “If we allow ourselves to be misled by it [this heresy], we distort the relation of the poem to its ‘truth’… we split the poem between its ‘form’ and its ‘content’” (Brooks 201). Humpty Dumpty’s ultimate demise might be seen to symbolize the heretical split between form and content: as a literary creation, Humpty Dumpty is an egg, a well-wrought urn of nonsense. His fall from the wall cracks him and separates the contents from the container, and not even all the King’s men can put the scrambled egg back together again!

Through the odd characters of a little girl and a foolish egg, “Jabberwocky” suggests a bit of sage advice about reading poetry, advice that the New Critics built their theories on. The importance lies not solely within strict analytical translation or interpretation, but in the overall effect of the imagery and word choice that evokes a meaning inseparable from those literary devices. As Archibald MacLeish so aptly writes: “A poem should not mean / But be.” Sometimes it takes a little nonsense to show us the sense in something.

Brooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry . 1942. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1956. Print.

Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking-Glass. Alice in Wonderland . 2nd ed. Ed. Donald J. Gray. New York: Norton, 1992. Print.

MacLeish, Archibald. “Ars Poetica.” The Oxford Book of American Poetry . Ed. David Lehman. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. 385–86. Print.

Attribution

• Sample Essay 1 received permission from Victoria Morillo to publish, licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International ( CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 )
• Sample Essays 2 and 3 adapted from Cordell, Ryan and John Pennington. "2.5: Student Sample Papers" from Creating Literary Analysis. 2012. Licensed Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported ( CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 )

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Poet, feminist and nun: Sister Madeleva Wolff’s ideal of the ‘well-rounded woman’

Last week, America announced the winner of the 2024 Foley Poetry Prize, James Davis May’s “ The Patron Saint of Sliding Glass Doors .” It offered a reminder that America is now in its 115th year of publishing poetry. There are some impressive names in that litany of authors, including Julia Alvarez , Thomas Merton , Christian Wiman , Mary Oliver (he said through gritted teeth), Dana Gioia , Elizabeth Acevedo , Angela Alaimo O’Donnell , Jessica Powers, Paul Mariani and many others. But a poet whose work often appeared in America is known for much more than her verse: M. Madeleva Wolff, C.S.C., was also a pioneer in Catholic education in the United States.

Named Mary Evaline Wolff at her birth in 1887, she grew up in Cumberland, Wis. After a year at the University of Wisconsin, she transferred to Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Ind., from which she would graduate in 1909. She entered the Sisters of the Holy Cross in 1908 and received the religious name Mary Madeleva. After graduation, she earned a master’s degree in literature at the University of Notre Dame while teaching at Saint Mary’s. During a stint as the principal of a high school in California, she began taking graduate classes at the University of California, Berkeley, where she earned her doctorate in English in 1925 (an extreme rarity for a woman religious at the time). She followed it up with post-graduate work at Oxford.

In 1926, Sister Madeleva became the dean and chief administrator of a small Catholic college for women outside Salt Lake City, Utah, Saint Mary-of-the-Wasatch. (How many Catholics were in Utah in 1926?! Bold move.) She was given a sabbatical in 1933-34, and traveled throughout Europe and Palestine. (“[M]ore like Utah than any place I have ever been,” she wrote.) While she seems to have gotten around just fine—meeting a number of prominent writers and poets, including W. B. Yeats, and attending lectures by Martin D’Arcy, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis—she noted that nuns did not have as much freedom as Jesuits when they traveled, the latter of whom were “loose all over Europe and for unlimited periods of time.”

While at Oxford, she learned that she had been appointed president of Saint Mary’s College. While at the time she called the decision “a disaster” she would stay in the position for 27 years, during which time the school quadrupled in size.

“Her ideal was the well-rounded woman. She wanted women to be intellectually agile,” Gail Porter Mandell wrote in her 1997 biography, Madeleva . Sister Madeleva also had goals that might be of interest today to Kansas City Chiefs placekicker Harrison Butker . “She wanted to help prepare them to think beyond being housewives,” Porter Mandell wrote. “She wanted women to be able to define themselves—and she knew education was the key.”

In 1943, frustrated at the lack of opportunities for women to study graduate-level theology, she founded the School of Sacred Theology at Saint Mary’s. “For more than a decade Saint Mary’s College School of Sacred Theology was the only place in the world where a layperson, male or female, religious or lay, could earn an advanced degree in Catholic theology,” Thomas C. Fox wrote in a 2016 essay on Sister Madeleva for Global Sisters Report . The school proved so popular that eventually other programs around the country—many of which had initially rebuffed Sister Madeleva—opened their doors to women.

Sister Madeleva’s social circle was wide and unconventional. Friends and correspondents throughout her life included the educator Mortimer Adler, the hotelier Conrad Hilton, Thomas Merton (who sent her his manuscripts before the publisher saw them), Edith Wharton, Jacques and Raissa Maritain, Joyce Kilmer, Frank and Maisie Sheed, John F. Kennedy, Claire Boothe Luce and the aforementioned C. S. Lewis. She also knew her way around the power brokers of the American Catholic Church, including bishops, university presidents and other prominent figures.

All the while, she continued to write poetry. Her first poem for America appeared in 1929. In a 1932 essay for the magazine, E. Francis McDevitt noted that her religious vocation was not an obstacle to her writing but a goad: “Sister Madeleva, enfolded in what is regarded as the ‘imprisoning’ habit of the Religious, confined by her vocation to the limits of her convent, the classroom and the school, displays a zestful, full-blooded interest in humanity, in its sins and its virtues, a curiosity for seeking out humanity’s fundamentals and folding back its hidden mysteries.” A 1938 America review of her “Gates and Other Poems” called her “America’s most authentic lyric poet.”

As Nick Ripatrazone related in a 2023 essay for America on “nun poets ,” Sister Madeleva made a promise to herself early in her life as a writer:

I would publish under my religious name. I would submit my work first to secular rather than to Catholic magazines. I had heard so much about Catholics being unable to receive recognition because they were Catholics. I resolved not to permit mediocrity in my writing to be attributed to my religion. As a Catholic and a sister I would write well enough for acceptance by the secular press, or I would not write at all.

In 1959, she published her autobiography, My First 70 Years , one of more than 50 books she authored during her life, including numerous volumes of poetry. That same year, she was honored by America with its Campion Award. Named after St. Edmund Campion, an English Jesuit martyr and the patron saint of America , the award was given regularly from 1955 to 2001 (and less regularly since) to a scholar or public figure for “eminent and long-standing service in the cause of letters.”

Retiring in 1961 due to poor health, Sister Madeleva died three years later from complications after gall bladder surgery. The New York Times obituary noted that she had “achieved distinction and fame as president of St. Mary’s College at South Bend, Ind., but her reputation as an educator was frequently overshadowed by her great outpouring of verse and essays.” Another obituary called her “the most renowned nun in the world.”

In her honor, in 1985 Saint Mary’s College established the Madeleva Lecture Series, which brings a prominent woman theologian to campus to speak every year. The list of honorees is a who’s who of famous Catholic thinkers, including Monika K. Hellwig, Sandra M. Schneiders, I.H.M., Joan Chittister, O.S.B., Dolores Leckey, Lisa Sowle Cahill, Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J., Diana Hayes and Margaret Farley, R.S.M., among many others.

In 2000, the first 16 women honored in the Madeleva Lecture Series authored the “ Madeleva Manifesto ,” offering “a message of hope and courage to women in the church.” The manifesto also challenged the broader church and society:

We deplore, and hold ourselves morally bound, to protest and resist, in church and society, all actions, customs, laws, and structures that treat women or men as less than fully human. We pledge ourselves to carry forth the heritage of biblical justice which mandates that all persons share in right relationship with each other, with the cosmos, and with the Creator.

Our poetry selection for this week is the winner of our 2024 Foley Poetry Prize: “ The Patron Saint of Sliding Glass Doors ,” by James Davis May. Readers can view all of America ’s published poems here .

Also, news from the Catholic Book Club: We have a new selection! We are reading Norwegian novelist and 2023 Nobel Prize winner Jon Fosse’s multi-volume work Septology . Click here to buy the book, and click here to sign up for our Facebook discussion group .

In this space every week, America features reviews of and literary commentary on one particular writer or group of writers (both new and old; our archives span more than a century), as well as poetry and other offerings from America Media. We hope this will give us a chance to provide you with more in-depth coverage of our literary offerings. It also allows us to alert digital subscribers to some of our online content that doesn’t make it into our newsletters.

Other Catholic Book Club columns:

The spiritual depths of Toni Morrison

What’s all the fuss about Teilhard de Chardin?

Moira Walsh and the art of a brutal movie review

​​Who’s in hell? Hans Urs von Balthasar had thoughts.

Happy reading!

James T. Keane

James T. Keane is a senior editor at America.

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