Dead Poets Society

Society Candidate George Hopkins. What is Honor?”
    Cameron sat stiffly as his father smiled smugly.
    “Honor is dignity and the fulfillment of duty!” the boy answered.
    Good, Mr. Hopkins. Honor Society Candidate Knox Overstreet. Knox, who also held a banner, stood.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “What is discipline?” Nolan asked.
    “Discipline is respect for parents, teachers, and headmaster. Discipline comes from within.”
    “Thank you, Mr. Overstreet. Honor candidate Neil Perry.”
    Knox sat down, smiling. His parents, sitting on either side of him, patted him with encouragement.
    Neil Perry rose to his feet. The breast pocket of his Welton blazer was covered with a huge cluster of achievement pins. The sixteen-year-old stood dutifully, staring angrily at Dean Nolan.
    “Excellence, Mr. Perry?”
    “Excellence is the result of hard work,” Perry replied loudly in a rotelike monotone. “Excellence is the key to all success, in school and everywhere.” He sat down and stared directly at the dais. Beside him his unsmiling father was stony eyed and silent, not acknowledging his son in the least.
    “Gentlemen,” Dean Nolan continued, “at Welton you will work harder than you have ever worked in your lives, and your reward will be the success that all of us expect of you.
    “Due to the retirement of our beloved English teacher, Mr. Portius, I hope that you will take this opportunity to meet his replacement, Mr. John Keating, himself an honors graduate of this school, who, for the last several years, has been teaching at the highly regarded Chester School in London.”
    Mr. Keating, who sat with the other members of the faculty, leaned slightly forward to acknowledge his introduction. In his early thirties, Keating, who had brown hair and brown eyes, was of medium height—an average-looking man. He appeared to be respectable and scholarly, but Neil Perry’s father eyed the new English teacher with suspicion.
    “To conclude these welcoming ceremonies,” Nolan said, “I would like to call to the podium Welton’s oldest living graduate, Mr. Alexander Carmichael, Jr., Class of 1886.”
    The audience rose to a standing ovation as the octogenarian haughtily shunned offers of help from those beside him and made his way to the podium with painstaking slowness. He mumbled a few words that the audience could barely make out, and, with that, the convocation came to an end. The students and their parents filed out of the chapel and onto the chilly campus grounds.
    Weathered stone buildings and a tradition of austerity isolated Welton from the world beyond. Like a vicar standing outside of church on Sunday, Dean Nolan watched students and parents say their good-byes.
    Charlie Dalton’s mother brushed the hair out of his eyes and hugged him tightly. Knox Overstreet’s father gave his son an affectionate squeeze as they walked around the campus pointing to its landmarks. Neil Perry’s father stood stiffly, adjusting the achievement pins on his son’s jacket. Todd Anderson stood alone, trying to unearth a stone with his shoe. His parents chatted nearby with another couple, paying no heed to their son. Staring at the ground self-consciously, Todd was startled when Dean Nolan approached him and tried to get a look at his name tag.
    “Ah, Mr. Anderson. You have some big shoes to fill, young man. Your brother was one of our best.”
    “Thank you, sir,” Todd said faintly.
    Nolan moved on, strolling past parents and students, greeting them and smiling all the time. He stopped when he reached Mr. Perry and Neil, and he put his hand on Neil’s shoulder.
    “We’re expecting great things of you, Mr. Perry,” the dean said to Neil.
    “Thank you, Mr. Nolan.”
    “He won’t disappoint us,” the boy’s father said to Nolan. “Right, Neil?”
    “I’ll do my best, sir.” Nolan patted Neil’s shoulder and moved on. He noticed that many of the younger boys’ chins quivered, and tears slipped out as they said good-bye to their parents, perhaps for the first time.
    “You’re going to love it here,” one father said, smiling and waving as he walked quickly away.
    Don’t be a baby,” another father snapped at his frightened and tearful son.
    Slowly the parents filtered out and cars pulled away. The boys had a new home at Welton Academy, isolated in the green but raw woods of Vermont.
    “I want to go home!” one boy wailed. An upperclassman patted his back and led him away toward the dorm.

Chapter 2

    “Walk,