Dead Poets Society

by N. H. Kleinbaum

The boys stood silent for a moment. “What did the name mean?” Neil asked. “Did you only read dead poets?”

  “All poetry was acceptable, Mr. Perry. The name simply referred to the fact that, to join the organization, you had to be dead.”

  “What?” the boys said in chorus.

  “The living were simply pledges. Full membership required a lifetime of apprenticeship. Alas, even I’m still a lowly initiate,” he explained.

  The boys looked at one another in amazement. “The last meeting must have been fifteen years ago,” Keating recalled. He looked around again to make sure no one was observing, then turned and strode away.

  “I say we go tonight,” Neil said excitedly when Keating was out of sight. “Everybody in?”

  “Where is this cave he’s talking about?” Pitts asked.

  “Beyond the stream. I think I know where it is,” Neil answered.

  “That’s miles,” Pitts complained.

  “Sounds boring to me,” Cameron said.

  “Don’t come, then,” Charlie shot back.

  “You know how many demerits we’re talking about here?” Cameron asked Charlie.

  “So don’t come!” Charlie said. “Please!”

  Cameron relented. “All I’m saying is, we have to be careful. We can’t get caught.”

  “Well, no kidding, Sherlock,” Charlie retorted sarcastically.

  “Who’s in?” Neil asked, silencing the argument.

  “I’m in,” Charlie said first.

  “Me too,” Cameron added.

  Neil looked at Knox, Pitts, and Meeks. Pitts hesitated. “Well …”

  “Oh, come on, Pitts,” Charlie said.

  “His grades are hurting, Charlie,” Meeks said in Pitts’s defense.

  “Then you can help him, Meeks,” Neil suggested.

  “What is this, a midnight study group?” Pitts asked, still unsure.

  “Forget it, Pitts,” Neil said. “You’re coming. Meeks, are your grades hurting, too?” Everyone laughed.

  “All right,” Meeks said. “I’ll try anything once.”

  “Except sex,” Charlie laughed. “Right, Meeks, old boy?” Meeks blushed as the boys laughed and horsed around him.

  “I’m in as long as we’re careful,” Cameron said.

  “Knox?” Charlie continued.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t get it.”

  “Come on,” Charlie encouraged. “It will help you get Chris.”

  “It will?” Knox looked mystified. “How do you figure that?”

  “Didn’t you hear Keating say women swooned!”

  “But why?” Knox asked, still uncertain.

  The group started to break up, and Knox followed Charlie toward the dorm.

  “Why do they swoon, Charlie? Tell me, why do they swoon?” Knox’s question remained unanswered when off in the distance a bell rang, summoning the boys to dinner.

  After dinner, Neil and Todd went to study hall and sat down at a table together.

  “Listen,” Neil said to his roommate in a hushed voice. “I’m inviting you to the society meeting.” Neil had noticed that no one had asked Todd if he was in. “You can’t expect everybody to think of you all the time. Nobody knows you. And you never talk to anyone!”

  “Thanks,” Todd said, “but its not a question of that.”

  “What is it then?” Neil asked.

  “I—I just don’t want to come,” he stammered.

  “But why?” Neil asked. “Don’t you understand what Keating is saying? Don’t you want to do something about it?” Neil quickly turned a page in his book as a study proctor walked by, eyeing the boys suspiciously.

  “Yes,” Todd whispered, after the proctor was out of earshot. “But …”

  “But what, Todd? Tell me,” Neil begged.

  Todd looked down. “I don’t want to read.”

  “What?” Neil looked at him incredulously.

  “Keating said everybody took turns reading,” Todd said. “I don’t want to do it.”

  “God, you really have a problem, don’t you?” Neil shook his head. “How can it hurt you to read? I mean, isn’t that what this is all about? Expressing yourself?”

  “Neil, I can’t explain it.” Todd blushed. “I just don’t want to do it.”

  Neil shuffled his papers angrily as he looked at Todd. Then he thought of something. “What if you didn’t have to read?” Neil suggested. “What if you just came and listened?”

  “That’s not the way it works,” Todd pointed out. “If I join, the guys will want me to read.”

  “I know, but what if they said you didn’t have to?”

  “You mean ask them?” Todd’s face reddened. “Neil, it’s embarrassing.”

  “No, it’s not,” Neil said, jumping up from his seat. “Just wait here.”

  “Neil,” Todd called, as the proctor turned and gave him a disapproving look.

  Neil was off before Todd could stop him. He slumped miserably in his seat, then opened his history book and began to take notes.

  CHAPTER 7

  Neil talked in low tones to Charlie and Knox in the dorm hall as the evening parade of prebedtime activity went on around them. Boys moved about the hallway in pajamas, carrying pillows under one arm and books under the other. Neil threw his towel over his shoulder, patted Knox on the back, and headed toward his room. He tossed the towel aside and noticed something on his desk that wasn’t there before.

  He hesitated momentarily, then picked up an old, well-worn poetry anthology. He opened it and, inside the cover, written in longhand, was the name “J. Keating.” Neil read aloud the inscription under the signature. “Dead Poets.” He stretched out on his bed and began skimming the thin yellowed pages of the old text. He read for about an hour, vaguely aware of the hallway sounds quieting down, doors slamming shut, and lights being turned off. There goes Dr. Hager; he’s still up, Neil thought, hearing the resident dorm marshal shuffling up and down the hallway, making sure all was quiet. He seemed to stop right in front of Neil’s closed door.

  “Quiet,” Dr. Hager said aloud, shaking his head. “Too quiet.”

  Several hours later, certain that everyone was deep in sleep, the boys met at the gnarled old maple tree. They had bundled themselves in winter hats, coats, and gloves, and a few of them had brought flashlights to guide the way. “Gggrrr!” The sound of the school hunting-dog startled them as he sniffed his way out of the bushes.

  “Nice doggie,” Pitts said, stuffing some cookies in his mouth and leaving a pile of them on the ground. “Let’s move it,” he hissed as the dog homed in on the food.

  “Good thinking, Pittsie,” Neil said as the boys crossed the campus under the light of a sky glowing with stars.

  “It’s cold,” Todd complained as they escaped the open, windblown campus and moved through an eerie pine forest, looking for the cave. Charlie ran ahead as the others trudged slowly in the cold.

  “We’re almost there,” Knox said as they reached the bank of the stream and began searching for the cave that was supposed to exist somewhere among the tree roots and brush.

  “Yaa! I’m a dead poet!” Charlie shouted, suddenly popping out of nowhere. He had found the cave.

  “Ahh!” Meeks shrieked. “Eat it, Dalton,” Meeks said to Charlie, recovering his composure.

  “This is it, boys,” Charlie smiled. “We’re home!”

  The boys crowded into the dark cave and spent several minutes gathering sticks and wood, trying to light a fire. The fire came to life and warmed the barren interior. The boys stood silently, as if in a holy sanctuary.

  “I hereby reconvene the Welton Chapter of the Dead Poets Society,” Neil said solemnly. “These meetings will be conducted by me and by the rest of the new initiates now present. Todd Anderson, because he prefers not to read, will keep minutes of the meetings.” Todd winced as Neil spoke, unhappy but unable to speak up for himself.

  “I will now read the traditional opening message from society member Henry David T
horeau.” Neil opened the book that Keating had left him and read: “‘I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.’” He skipped through the text. “‘I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life!’”

  “I’ll second that!” Charlie interrupted.

  “‘To put to rout all that was not life,’” Neil continued, skipping again. “‘And not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.’” There was a long silence.

  “Pledge Overstreet,” Neil said.

  Knox rose. Neil handed him the book. Knox found another page and read: “‘If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.’ Yes!” Knox said, his eyes blazing. “I want success with Chris!”

  Charlie took the book from Knox. “Come on, man,” he said, making a face at Knox, “this is serious.” Charlie cleared his throat.

  “There’s the wonderful love of a beautiful maid,

  And the love of a staunch, true man,

  And the love of a baby that’s unafraid.

  All have existed since time began.

  But the most wonderful love,

  the Love of all loves,

  Even greater than the love for Mother,

  Is the infinite, tenderest, passionate love,

  Of one dead drunk for another.”

  “Author anonymous,” Charlie laughed as he handed the book to Pitts.

  “‘Here lies my wife: here let her lie. Now she’s at rest … And so am I!’” Pitts giggled. “John Dryden, 1631–1700. I never thought those guys had a sense of humor!” he said.

  Pitts handed the book to Todd while the boys laughed at his joke. Todd froze, holding the book, and Neil quickly took it before the others noticed.

  Charlie grabbed the book from Neil and read:

  “Teach me to love? Go teach thyself more wit:

  I chief professor am of it.

  The god of love, If such a thing there be,

  May learn to love from me.”

  The boys “oohhed and aahhed” at Charlie’s alleged prowess. “Come on guys, we gotta be serious,” Neil said.

  Cameron took the book. “This is serious,” he said and began to read:

  “We are the music makers

  And we are the dreamers of dreams,

  Wandering by lonely sea-breakers,

  And sitting by desolate streams;

  World losers and world forsakers,

  On whom the pale moon gleams:

  Yet we are the movers and shakers

  Of the world, forever, it seems.

  With wonderful deathless ditties

  We build up with world’s great cities,

  And out of a fabulous story

  We fashion an empire’s glory:

  One man with a dream, at pleasure

  Shall go forth and conquer a crown;

  And three with a new song’s measure

  Can trample an empire down.

  We in the ages lying,

  In the buried past of the earth,

  Built Nineveh with our sighing,

  And Babel itself with our mirth.”

  “Amen,” several boys uttered.

  “Sshh!” hissed the others. Cameron continued:

  “And o’erthrew them with prophesying

  To the old of the new world’s worth;

  For each age is a dream that is dying,

  Or one that is coming to birth.”

  Cameron stopped dramatically. “That was by Arthur O’Shaughnessy, 1844–81.”

  The boys sat quietly. Meeks took the book and leafed through the pages. “Hey, this is great,” he said, and started reading seriously:

  “Out of the night that covers me,

  Black as the Pit from pole to pole

  I thank whatever gods may be

  For my unconquerable soul!”

  “That was W. E. Henley, 1849–1903.”

  “Come on, Meeks,” Pitts scoffed. “You?”

  “What?” Meeks said, his look all surprise and innocence.

  Knox flipped through the book next and suddenly moaned out loud, reading as though to a vision of Chris in the cave. “‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth …’”

  Charlie grabbed the book. “Cool it already, Knox,” he growled.

  The boys laughed. Neil took the book and read to himself for a minute. The boys huddled around the fire that by now was growing dimmer.

  “Sshh,” Neil said, reading deliberately,

  “Come my friends,

  ’Tis not too late to seek a newer world....

  for my purpose holds

  To sail beyond the sunset … and though

  We are not now that strength which in old days

  Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;—

  One equal temper of heroic hearts,

  Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

  To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

  “From ‘Ulysses,’ by Tennyson,” he concluded. The boys grew silent, touched by Neil’s impassioned reading and Tennyson’s statement of purpose.

  Pitts took the book. He started to pound out a congo rhythm as he read the poem:

  “Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room,

  Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable,

  Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,

  Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,

  Hard as they were able,

  Boom, boom, BOOM,

  With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,

  Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM.

  THEN I had religion, THEN I had a vision.

  I could not turn from their revel in derision.

  THEN I SAW THE CONGO, CREEPING THROUGH THE BLACK,

  CUTTING THROUGH THE FOREST WITH A GOLDEN TRACK....”

  As Pitts continued to read, the boys were entranced by the compelling rhythm of the poem. They danced and clowned to the beat, jumping and whooping around. Their gestures grew steadily wilder and more ridiculous and they began to make jungle noises, beating their legs and heads. Pitts continued reading as Charlie led the group, dancing and howling, out of the cave and into the night.

  They danced wildly in the forest, swaying with the tall trees and the howling wind.

  The fire in the cave went out and the forest turned pitch black. The boys stopped dancing, and, as soon as they did, they started to shiver, partly from the cold and partly from the exhilaration they felt from having let their imaginations run free.

  “We’d better get going,” Charlie said. “Before you know it, we’ll have to be in class.”

  They snaked through the woods to a clearing that led back to the Welton campus. “Back to reality,” Pitts said as they stood facing the campus.

  “Or something,” Neil sighed. They ran quietly to their dorm, slipped out the twig that held the rear door open, and tiptoed to their rooms.

  The next day several of the night revelers yawned as they sat in Mr. Keating’s class. Keating, however, paced vigorously back and forth in front of the room.

  “A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use …” He snapped his fingers and pointed to a boy.

  “Morose?”

  “Good!” Keating said with a smile. “Language was invented for one reason, boys—” He snapped his fingers again and pointed to Neil.

  “To communicate?”

  “No,” Keating said. “To woo women. And, in that endeavor, laziness will not do. It also won’t do in your essays.”

  The class laughed. Keating closed his book, then walked to the front of the room and raised a map that had covered the blackboard. On the board was a quotation. Keating read it aloud to the class:

  “Creeds and schools in abeyance, I permit to speak at every hazard, Nature without check with original energy …”

  “Uncle Walt again,” he said. “Ah, but the difficulty of ignoring those creeds and schools, conditi
oned as we are by our parents, our traditions, by the modern age. How do we, like Walt, permit our own true natures to speak? How do we strip ourselves of prejudices, habits, influences? The answer, my dear lads, is that we must constantly endeavor to find a new point of view.” The boys listened intently. Then suddenly Keating leaped up on his desk. “Why do I stand here?” he asked.

  “To feel taller?” Charlie suggested.

  “I stand on my desk to remind myself that we must constantly force ourselves to look at things differently. The world looks different from up here. If you don’t believe it, stand up here and try it. All of you. Take turns.”

  Keating jumped off. All of the boys, except for Todd Anderson, walked to the front of the room, and, a few at a time, took turns standing on Keating’s desk. Keating strolled up and down the aisles expectantly as he watched them.

  “If you’re sure about something,” he said as they slowly returned to their seats, “force yourself to think about it another way, even if you know it’s wrong or silly. When you read, don’t consider only what the author thinks, but take time to consider what you think.

  “You must strive to find your own voice, boys, and the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all. Thoreau said, ‘Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.’ Why be resigned to that? Risk walking new ground. Now …” Keating walked to the door as all eyes followed him intently. He looked at the class, then flashed the room lights on and off over and over again, crying out a noise that sounded like crashing thunder. “In addition to your essays,” he said after this boisterous demonstration, “I want each of you to write a poem—something of your own—to be delivered aloud in class. See you Monday.”

  With that he walked out of the room. The class sat mute and baffled by their eccentric teacher. After a moment, Keating popped his head back in, grinning impishly. “And don’t think I don’t know this assignment scares you to death, Mr. Anderson, you mole.” Keating held out his hand and pretended to send lightning bolts at Todd. The class laughed nervously, somewhat embarrassed for Todd, who forced out a hint of a smile.

  School ended early on Friday, and the boys left Keating’s class, happy to have an afternoon off.

  “Let’s go up to the bell tower and work on that crystal radio antenna,” Pitts said to Meeks as they walked across campus. “Radio Free America!”