Deadpoet Society

Journal #1:

When I watched this film, I think I got better the idea of Romanticism, I think it was the best way to understand it because it had a good character John Keating could be said to be the protagonist of the movie. It also could be said that his character is a Romantic one and due to that he is very educated. At the beginning, John Keating was just the substitute teacher with different ideas, he was the one that told the students to rip all the pages of the book that told how to see a beautiful was a poem, like how it needed to be, he didn’t like that because he said that poems beauty was just subjective, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. HE taught this students in a way that is against the school beliefs. During all the movie , John was inspiring his students to do all the things that they wanted but they couldn't do it due to all the pressure they had from their parents and the school rules. Neil was one of his students, he always wanted to be a theater actor and John Keating inspired him to be in the Final Play por the theater, he was starring the play. Neil’s parents were putting too much pressure on him and told him that he can't participate on the play but he didn’t care. After he participated on the play, he received even more pressure from his dad and what caused was Neil’s suicide. I think this is a perfect example of transcendentalism, it doesn't include nature in any way but can be related because Neil and the theater were like 1 person, they were one. At the end of the movie after Neil died, John Keating was fired from that school because everyone in the school thought he was making kids mad with his “stupid” ideas and just the kids that were in the deadpoet society were the ones that missed. He was fired because they suspected that all the ideas he taught at the school were dangerous and could only bring bad consequences in every aspect of life. We watched the kids fall in love with the abstract way of poetry. When the society had been shut down by the school Todd, the poet who got more influenced due to his shy personality started a final romantic movement. Todd started a movement to salute his fallen teacher, it is romantic because we as watchers felt that moment deeply.