Dead Poets Society
O Captain, My Captain
A little backstory, if you will.
I was around 25 when this came out. I had been married for a couple of years and within a few more I'd be divorced, leave a good paying middle class, factory job that I hated, moved to the east side of the city of Detroit and become a bartender, in a number of different bars, for the next five, six years.
Not BECAUSE of this movie.
The young man I was, the trouble-making smart ass, artist who had already rose above the shenanigans I had seen as a preteen in such movies as
Animal House through my teen years, had already embraced the ideology of this flick, long ago, without having a literary name to it.
It was that Poet Idealism that I scarcely paid attention to in school; illuminated beautifully from the first time Robin Williams character walked out into the classroom, out the door, popped in and told his class, "C'mon."
We have our first introduction to Whitman as Keating lets them know, IF they are daring, they may call him: O Captain, My Captain. And the first bit of poetry is deciphered:
Gather ye rosebuds, while ye may, and the ideology of
carpe deim is introduced.
I was enamored.
Sound my barbaric yawp from the rooftops of the world?? HELL YEAH, MUTHAF8CKA! I've been doin that for years!
When Keating explains:
We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for. To quote from Whitman, "O me! O life!... of the questions of these recurring; of the endless trains of the faithless... of cities filled 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. That the powerful play *goes on* and you may contribute a verse. What will your verse be?
What WILL your verse be?. . .
I was inspired.
When Neil felt alive, for the first time in his life when he was on the stage - I cheered.
When the tragedy occurred - I wept.
Every time I watched this movie.
And I gotta tell ya, I'm rather pleased with myself, as a man over 50, I cried on this re-watch. YAY
Like anyone who has sucked the marrow out of life, at some point I did choke on the bone. It happens. Much like in the third act of this movie and sh#t hits the fan and Puck MUST make amends.
I still re-watched this movie through those times. And I understood the more harsher circumstances, having experienced them myself.
And now?
Thoreau said, "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation."
My friends, f@ck that.