Robin Williams: Dead Poet's Society

Robin Williams, a well-acclaimed actor, does an incredibly impressive job playing the role of John Charles Keating in the movie Dead Poets Society. The character of Mr. Keating is an English professor at Welton Academy. According to his yearbook information found in the movie, Keating entered the Academy as a student in 1941. The traditions from the early-1940s, such as the fashion, technology, and poetry, may have influenced Mr. Keating’s carefree nature as a teacher.

Fashion in the mid-20th century was “a good mix of comfort and glamour” (“Fashion in the 1940s”). People wore bright and colorful attire. An eighteen-year-old male, like young Mr. Keating entering Welton Academy, thought “his poplin jacket is pretty special” (“Fashion in the

A well-known example is the development of the atomic bomb. Furthermore, the production of the first radar-equipped Royal Air Force aircraft assisted in shaping every nation as whole (Pearson). The “Gloster-Whittle E 28/39 Jet aircraft flew successfully over Cranwell, England” (Pearson). But, as the war raged on, Keating still had to use textbooks at Welton Academy until computers were first constructed in 1943 and officially innovated in 1946 – after he graduated from the Academy. Nevertheless, young Keating had to use a typical typewriter for his essays. According to Dead Poets Society, by telling the students to freely rip out the pages in their textbooks when he became their English professor, this scene tells the audience that the disparaging act of tactical vandalism performed by Mr. Keating was to emphasize the action of ‘seizing the day!’ He could not care less about the book, rather, the lack of technology that he had access to when he was a student at the Academy influenced him to have a freer attitude towards the strict, textbook style of

We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion. 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” (Dead Poets Society). It is quite possible that the reason he became an English professor and not a Math professor was because he had a passion. Keating had a drive for poetry. A popular 1940’s poet was T. S. Eliot; young John Keating may have read some of Eliot’s poems, such as “The Wasteland” (“Poet Seers”). That specific poem was the most acclaimed and influential piece in the modern century. Billy Collins was also “an American phenomenon” (“Poet Seers”). Professor Keating quoted poets in the movie, such as Henry David Thoreau, Robert Frost, and Walt Whitman. Poetry was a heavy influence to him as a student in the 1940’s, and he passes that knowledge on to his own