The following piece, “What We Stay Alive For: Dead Poets Society and the Crisis of the Humanities” first appeared in the Autumn 2021 issue of Evangelization & Culture, the quarterly journal of the Word on Fire Institute. You can learn more and become a member today to read more pieces like this.
It is a strange thing to return to a coming-of-age story having doubled the age of the angsty protagonist.
I learned this lesson recently upon rewatching Dead Poets Society, the 1989 drama starring Robin Williams as John Keating, an unorthodox poetry teacher who shakes up a stodgy all-male prep school in the late 1950s. Peter Weir’s film was naturally a hit with teachers—according to Ranker.com, it is the #1 film for and about teachers—and I suspect that it has been screened for thousands upon thousands of high school students since its release. Revisiting the movie as I approach my upper thirties, though—Robin Williams’ age when it was released—I found myself standing opposite these students, with a deepened appreciation for those struggling to reach and raise them.
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