The Light of Self-Knowledge

Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman were among the founding fathers of Transcendentalism. John Keating from the video "Dead Poet’s Society" is a teacher who carries the philosophies of these Transcendentalists and seeks to pass the noble and idealistic message to his students. The unconventional basis for Keating’s teaching, as well as his execution of the ideas, serves to illuminate truth and beauty in the cold New England setting of the video "Dead Poet’s Society."

The basis for much of Keating’s unconventional teaching style draws from the simple genius of Henry David Thoreau’s writings on writing. Firstly, Keating believes "Intellectual freedom is necessary to the teaching of" poetry (Hughes, "Thoreau as a Writer and Teacher of Writing"). In other words, he wants his students to think for themselves. In his lesson in the courtyard, Keating illustrates the ease and dangers of conformity. Encouraging his students to "Trust thyself" (Emerson, "Self-Reliance") and to "Take the road less traveled by" (Frost, "The Road Not Taken") Keating lets them walk their own ways in the courtyard, in hopes that they will walk their own ways in life.

Thoreau also believed "Education should not be a mass process" (Lawrence, Lee, The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, p. 32). Keating seems to agree. He reaches out to his students and tries to touch them individually. Todd Anderson is a shy, introverted student, deathly afraid of being ... anything. Yet Keating presses him to break free from his self-imposed chains. While he could have easily left him alone, Keating makes him step up and "YAWP," and helps him reveal the poet inside.

On a similar note is the ripping out of "Understanding Poetry" by J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D. Rather than force his students to ascribe to J. Evans Pritchard’s mathematical examination of poetry, he encourages his students to see the beauty in the written word, not dissect it heartlessly. He does not wish to be the learned astronomer didactically arranging "the proofs, the figures... in columns"; he wants his students to "in the mystical moist night air... look up in perfect silence at the stars." (Whitman, "When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.")

Keating latched onto the real-worldliness aspect of literature -- the hopes, the dreams, the aspirations, and the everyday emotions all expressed in poetry -- and linked them to his students. He says, "We don’t read literature because it’s cute. Poetry, beauty, romance, love ... these are what we stay alive for." (video, "Dead Poet’s Society") Keating touched the boys’ humanity by illuminating for them the universal human truths embedded in lines of verse, and thereby connected the importance of literature to the most core elements of his students’ beings.

But he did not do this in the way a drill sergeant would. Following Thoreau’s sixth tenet of teaching writing, Keating believes in "thorough education of the senses" ("Thoreau as a Writer and Teacher of Writing"). Wil Neuton learns about himself through observations, drawing, and imitating what he sees, all in a quest for self knowledge. In his writings about the frog, Wil says, "If you wanted to learn about something, is that a way to do it? ... Dip him in alcohol, kill him, flip him up on a table and push his guts around with a stick to know him?… That’s what happened to my thinking and so I set out to learn about a frog and watch a frog because I already knew how one frog’s day ended, how he ended in the heron’s stomach." (Paulsen, The Island, pp. 120-121)

Likewise, Keating’s lesson for the first day of class is an "experience": a field trip to the glass trophy case. Rather than lecture his students on how to "seize the day," Keating allows the students to grasp this for themselves. He asks them to look into the eyes of the robust young men of Welton’s past and let them realize for themselves that time is short.

Keating ties in the lesson from the previous day to a poem: "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may/Old time is still a-flying./And this same flower that smiles today/Tomorrow will be dying." (Herrick, "To the Virgins, Make Much of Time") In other words, time is short. Perhaps it is not best to say, "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple" (Joseph, "Warning) for there may not be an old age of which to speak.

Keating tossed the thought to his students: "The powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?" (video, "Dead Poet’s Society")

Time for Keating is running out, however. "For nonconformity, the world whips you with its displeasure," (Emerson, "Self-Reliance") and for Keating, the price of his independent thinking is his job. For Charles, the price of his rebellious nonconformity was expulsion. For Neil Perry, the price of his unwillingness to conform to his father’s desires was his life.

Yet, Keating has succeeded in making a impact. His nonconformist style of teaching makes a difference in his students lives: Neil learns to be free from the shackles of his father’s unbending will, Knox musters up the nerve to woo Chris, and Todd finds his voice.

John Keating is an unconventional teacher. He believes in the importance of free thought and passes the message of the Transcendentalists to his students. His students learn to be individuals and to "suck the marrow out of life." Keating teaches them to find truth and beauty within themselves in the midst of a cold, gray, and suffocating New England prep school world.