Dead Poets Society

Charlie asked. “You look ; shell-shocked. What did they serve, Welton Mystery Meat?”
    “Terrible,” Knox wailed. “Awful! I just met the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my life!”
    Neil jumped up from the study group and ran over to the couch. “Are you crazy? What’s wrong with that?”
    “She’s practically engaged to Chet Danburry, Mr. Mondo Jocko himself,” Knox moaned.
    “Too bad,” Pitts said.
    “Too bad! It’s not too bad, it’s a tragedy!”
    Knox shouted. “Why does she have to be in love with a jerk?”
    “All the good ones go for jerks,” Pitts said matter-of-factly. “You know that. Forget her. Take out your trig book and figure out problem 12.”
    “I can’t just forget her, Pitts. And I certainly can’t think about math!“
    “Sure you can. You’re off on a tangent—so you’re halfway into trig already!” Meeks laughed loudly.
    “Oh, Meeks! That was terrible,” Cameron said, shaking his head.
    Meeks grinned sheepishly. “I thought it was clever.”
    Knox stopped pacing and faced his friends. “You really think I should forget her?”
    “You have another choice?” Pitts said.
    Knox dropped to his knees in front of Pitts as though he were proposing. “Only you, Pittsie,” he implored, with an exaggerated sigh. “There’s only you!” Pitts pushed him away, and Knox slumped into a chair in the lobby as the boys resumed their math.
    “That’s it for tonight, guys,” Meeks said, breaking up the study group. “Tomorrow will bring more work, fear not.”
    “Say, what happened to Todd?” Cameron asked as they gathered up their books.
    “Said he wanted to do history,” Neil said.
    “Come on, Knox,” Cameron said. “You’ll survive this chick. Maybe you’ll think of something to win her love. Remember, seize the day!” Knox smiled, got up from the couch, and followed the boys to their rooms.

    The following morning John Keating sat in a chair beside his desk. His mood seemed serious and quiet.
    “Boys,” he said as the class bell rang, “open your Pritchard text to page 21 of the introduction. Mr. Perry”—he gestured toward Neil-—“kindly read aloud the first paragraph of the preface entitled Understanding Poetry.”
    The boys found the pages in their text, sat upright, and followed as Neil read: ‘“Understanding Poetry, by Dr. J. Evan Pritchard, Phd. To fully understand poetry, we must first be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech, then ask two questions: 1) How artfully has the objective of the poem been rendered and 2) How important is that objective? Question 1 rates the poem’s perfection; question 2 rates its importance. Once these questions have been answered, determining the poem’s greatness becomes a relatively simple matter. If the poem’s score for perfection is plotted on the horizontal of a graph and its importance is plotted on the vertical, then calculating the total area of the poem yields the measure of its greatness. A sonnet by Byron might score high on the vertical but only average on the horizontal. A Shakespearean sonnet, on the other hand, would score high both horizontally and vertically, yielding a massive total area, thereby revealing the poem to be truly great.”‘
    Keating rose from his seat as Neil read and went to the blackboard. He drew a graph, demonstrating by lines and shading, how the Shakespeare poem would overwhelm the Byron poem.
    Neil continued reading. “As you proceed through the poetry in this book, practice this rating method. As your ability to evaluate poems in this manner grows, so will your enjoyment and understanding of poetry.’”
    Neil stopped, and Keating waited a moment to let the lesson sink in. Then Keating grabbed onto his own throat and screamed horribly. “AHHHHGGGGG!!” he shouted. “Refuse! Garbage! Pus! Rip it out of your books. Go on, rip out the entire page! I want this rubbish in the trash where it belongs!”
    He grabbed the trash can and dramatically marched down the aisles, pausing for each boy to deposit the ripped page from his book. The whole class laughed and snickered.
    “Make a clean tear,” Keating cautioned. “I want nothing left of it! Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, you are disgraceful!” The laughter grew, and it attracted the attention of the Scottish Latin teacher, Mr. McAllister, across the hall. Mr. McAllister came out of his room and peeked into the door window as the boys ripped the pages from their books. Alarmed, he pulled open the