Dead Poets Society

by N. H. Kleinbaum

  Mrs. Danburry walked into a huge wood-paneled library. “Joe,” she said to a sharply dressed man who looked about forty. “This is Knox.”

  Joe stuck out his hand and smiled warmly. “Knox, good to see you. Come in. Joe Danburry.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Knox smiled, trying to keep himself from looking toward the staircase.

  “You’re the spitting image of your father. How is he?” Joe asked as he offered Knox a glass of soda.

  “Great,” Knox nodded. “Just did a big case for GM.”

  “Ah. I know where you’re headed—like father, like son, eh?” Joe laughed. “Have you met our daughter, Virginia?”

  “Oh, that was your daughter?” Knox asked enthusiastically, pointing toward the staircase.

  “Virginia, say hello,” Mrs. Danburry instructed as a cute but rather plain fifteen-year-old girl stood up from the floor on the other side of the room. Her books and pages of neatly written notes were strewn across the floor.

  “It’s Ginny,” she said as she turned to Knox. “Hi,” she said and smiled shyly.

  “Hello,” Knox said, glancing briefly at Ginny, before staring again at the staircase where his eyes stayed glued on the slender legs he saw standing there. He heard a giggle come from that direction, and he turned awkwardly back to Ginny.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Mr. Danburry said, gesturing toward a comfortable leather chair. “Did your father ever tell you about the case we had together?”

  “Pardon?” Knox said absently. The girl in the tennis dress was coming down the stairs with a tall athletic-looking young man.

  “He didn’t tell you what happened?” Mr. Danburry laughed.

  “Er, no,” Knox said, unable to take his eyes off the girl. The couple stepped into the room as Mr. Danburry started to recall the story.

  “We were really stuck,” he reminisced. “I was sure I’d lost the biggest case of my life. Then your father came to me and told me he could weasel a settlement—but only if I gave him the entire fee from our client! The son of a gun!” He slapped his knee. “You know what I did?”

  “Huh?” Knox said.

  “I let him have it!” he roared. “I was so desperate, I let your father take the whole fee!” Knox faked a laugh, trying to keep up with the hysterical laughter of Mr. Danburry, while his eyes kept darting to the couple standing in the doorway.

  “Dad, can I take the Buick?” the young man asked.

  “What’s wrong with your car?” Joe said. “Chet, where are your manners? Knox, this is my son Chet and his girlfriend, Chris Noel. This is Knox Overstreet.”

  “We sort of met,” Knox said, staring at Chris. “Almost.”

  “Yes.” Chris smiled as she answered.

  “Hi,” Chet said, totally disinterested.

  Mrs. Danburry stood. “Excuse me while I check on dinner,” she said.

  “Come on, Dad, why is this always a big deal?” Chet asked.

  “Because I bought you a sports car and suddenly you want my car all the time.”

  “Chris’s mom feels safer when we’re in a bigger car. Right, Chris?” Chet shot her a wicked smile, and Chris blushed.

  “It’s all right, Chet,” she said.

  “It’s not all right. Come on, Dad …” Joe Danburry walked out of the room, and Chet followed after him, pleading. “Come on, Dad. You’re not using the Buick tonight, so why can’t I?”

  While the bickering continued in the hall, Knox, Ginny, and Chris stood awkwardly in the library.

  “So, uh, where do you go to school?” Knox asked.

  “Ridgeway High,” Chris said. “How’s Henley Hall, Gin?”

  “Okay,” Ginny said flatly.

  “That’s your sister school, isn’t it?” Chris said, looking at Knox.

  “Sort of.”

  “Ginny, are you going out for the Henley Hall play?” Chris asked. “They’re doing A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” she explained to Knox.

  “Maybe,” Ginny shrugged.

  “So, how did you meet Chet?” Knox asked Chris. Both girls stared at him. “I mean, er …” he stammered.

  “Chet plays on the Ridgeway football team, and I’m a cheerleader,” Chris explained. “He used to go to Welton but he flunked out.” She turned to Ginny. “You should do it, Gin, you’d be great.”

  Ginny looked down shyly as Chet came to the door. “Chris,” he smiled. “We got it. Let’s go.”

  “Nice meeting you, Knox.” Chris smiled again as she walked out, hand in hand with Chet. “Bye, Gin.”

  “Nice meeting you, Chris,” Knox choked out.

  “Might as well sit down until dinner,” Ginny suggested. An awkward moment of silence followed. “Chet just wanted the Buick so they can go parking,” she confided with a blush, not being able to think of anything better to say.

  Knox watched through the window as Chris and Chet got into the Buick and kissed, long and hard. His heart was pounding with envy.

  Two hours later, Knox staggered into the lobby of the dorm where Neil, Cameron, Meeks, Charlie, and Pitts were studying math. Pitts and Meeks worked on assembling a small crystal radio as the study session progressed. Knox collapsed onto a couch.

  “How was dinner?” 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. “AHHH-HGGGGG!!” 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 door and rushed into Keating’s room.

  “What the …” McAllister said, until he spotted Keating holding the trash can. “Sorry, I didn’t think you were here, Mr. Keating.” Baffled and embarrassed, he backed out of the room and quietly closed the door.

  Keating strutted back to the front of the room, put the trash can on the floor and jumped into it. The boys laughed louder. Fire danced in Keating’s eyes. He stomped the trash a few times, then stepped out and kicked the can away.

  “This is battle, boys,” he cried. “War! You are souls at a critical juncture. Either you will succumb to the will of academic hoi polloi, and the fruit will die on the vine—or you will triumph as individuals.

  “Have no fear, you will learn what this school wants you to learn in my class; however, if I do my job properly, you will also learn a great deal more. For example, you will learn to savor language and words because no matter what anyone tells you, words and ideas have the power to change the world. A moment ago I used the term ‘hoi polloi.’ Who knows what it means? Come on, Overstreet, you twerp.”

  The class laughed. “Anderson, are you a man or a boil?” The class laughed again, and everyone looked at Todd. He tensed visibly, and, unable to speak, jerkily shook his head. “No.”

  Meeks raised his hand. “The hoi polloi. Doesn’t it mean ‘the herd’?”

  “Precisely, Meeks,” Keating said. “Greek ‘for the herd.’ However, be warned that when you say ‘the hoi polloi,’ you are actually saying, ‘the the herd,’ indicating that you, too, are hoi polloi!”

  Keating grinned wryly, and Meeks smiled. The teacher paced to the back of the room. “Now Mr. Pitts may argue that nineteenth-century literature has nothing to do with business school or medical school. He thinks we should study our J. Evans Pritchard, learn our rhyme and meter, and quietly go about our business of achieving other ambitions.”

  Pitts smiled and shook his head. “Who, me?” he asked.

  Keating slammed his hand on the wall behind him, and the sound reverberated like a drum. The entire class jumped and turned to the rear. “Well,” Keating whispered defiantly. “I say—drivel! One reads poetry because he is a member of the human race, and the human race is filled with passion! Medicine, law, banking—these are necessary to sustain life. But poetry, romance, love, beauty? These are what we stay alive for!

  “I quote from Whitman:

  “O me! O life! of the questions of these recurring,

  Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d 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!”

  Keating paused. The class sat silent, taking in the message of the poem. Keating looked around again and repeated awestruck, “‘That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.’”

  He stood silent at the back of the room, then slowly walked to the front. All eyes were riveted on his impassioned face. Keating looked around the room. “What will your verse be?” he asked intently.

  The teacher waited a long moment, then softly broke the mood. “Let’s open our texts to page 60 and learn about Wordsworth’s notion of romanticism.”

  CHAPTER 6

  McAllister pulled out a chair next to Keating at the teachers’ dining table and sat down. “Mind if I join you?” he asked, as he plopped his huge frame into the seat and signaled to a waiter for service.

  “My pleasure,” Keating smiled. He looked out at the room filled with blazer-clad boys eating lunch.

  “Quite an interesting class you had today, Mr. Keating,” McAllister said sarcastically.

  Keating looked up. “Sorry if I shocked you.”

  “No need to apologize,” McAllister said as he shook his head, his mouth already filled with the mystery meat of the day. “It was quite fascinating, misguided though it was.”

  Keating raised his eyebrows. “You think so?”

  McAllister nodded. “Undeniably. You take a big risk encouraging them to be artists, John. When they realize that they’re not Rembrandts or Shakespeares or Mozarts, they’ll hate you for it.”

  “Not artists, George,” Keating said. “You missed the point. Free thinkers.”

  “Ah,” McAllister laughed, “free thinkers at seventeen!”

  “I hardly pegged you as a cynic,” Keating said, sipping a cup of tea.

  “Not a cynic, my boy,” McAllister said knowingly. “A realist! Show me the heart unfettered by foolish dreams, and I’ll show you a happy man!” He chewed a bite. “But I will enjoy listening to your lectures, John,” McAllister added. “I’ll bet I will.”

  Keating grinned with amusement. “I hope you’re not the only one who feels that way,” he said, glancing at several of the boys from the junior class who were seated nearby.

  The boys all turned as Neil Perry walked quickly into the dining room and sat down with them.

  “You guys won’t believe this!” he said, puffing breathlessly. “I found his senior annual in the library.” Neil looked toward Keating, who was engaged in animated conversation with Mr. McAllister at the teacher’s table. He opened the annual and read: “‘Captain of the soccer team, editor of the annual, Cambridge-bound, Man most likely to do anything, Thigh man, Dead Poets Society.’”

  The others tried to grab the old annual. “Thigh man?” Charlie laughed, “Mr. K. was a hell-raiser. Good for him!”

  “What is the Dead Poets Society?” Knox asked, as he leafed through the book of old photos of Keating’s Welton class.

  “Any group pictures in the annual?” Meeks asked.

  “Not of that,” Neil said, as he studied the captions. “No other mention of it.”

  Neil looked through the annual as Charlie nudged his leg. “Nolan,” he hissed. As the dean approached, Neil passed the book under the table to Cameron, who immediately handed it over to Todd, who looked at him questioningly, then took it.

  “Enjoying your classes, Mr. Perry?” Nolan asked as he paused at the boys’ table.

  “Yes, sir, very much,” Neil said.

  “And our Mr. Keating? Finding him interesting, boys?”

  “Yes, sir,” Charlie said. “We were just talking about that, sir.”

  “Good,” Nolan said approvingly. “
We’re very excited about him. He was a Rhodes scholar, you know.” The boys smiled and nodded.

  Nolan walked to another table. Todd pulled out the annual from under the table and leafed through it on his lap as he finished lunch

  “I’ll take the annual back,” Neil said to Todd, as they got up to leave the dining room.

  “What are you going to do with it?” Todd asked hesitantly.

  “A little research,” Neil said, smiling smugly.

  After classes, Neil, Charlie, Meeks, Pitts, Cameron, and Todd headed back to the dorm together. They spotted Mr. Keating, wearing his sport coat and a scarf, walking across the lawn with an arm full of books.

  “Mr. Keating?” Neil called after him. “Sir? O Captain! My Captain?” Keating stopped and waited for the boys to catch up with him. “What was the Dead Poets Society, sir?” Neil asked. For a split second, Keating’s face reddened. “I was just looking in an old annual,” Neil explained, “and …”

  “Nothing wrong with research,” Keating said, regaining his composure.

  The boys waited for him to say more. “But what was it?” Neil pressed.

  Keating looked around to make sure that no one was watching. “A secret organization,” he almost whispered. “I don’t know how the present administration would look upon it, but I doubt the reaction would be favorable.” His eyes scanned the campus as the boys held their breaths. “Can you boys keep a secret?” They nodded instantly. “The Dead Poets was a society dedicated to sucking the marrow out of life. That phrase is by Thoreau and was invoked at every meeting,” he explained. “A small group of us would meet at the old cave, and we would take turns reading Shelley, Thoreau, Whitman, our own verse—and the enchantment of the moment let it work its magic on us.” Keating’s eyes glowed, recalling the experience.

  “You mean it was a bunch of guys sitting around reading poetry?” Knox asked, bewildered.

  Keating smiled. “Both sexes participated, Mr. Overstreet. And believe me, we didn’t simply read … we let it drip from our tongues like honey. Women swooned, spirits soared … gods were created, gentlemen.”