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How is writing related to a world-view? Is poetry for all? Would we lose ourselves without poetry? Is schooling against nature and awareness? What kind of thinking impedes convention?
Tom Schulman: Dead Poets Society
Excerpts from the script of Peter Weir's movie, Dead Poets Society
Page 2
MEEKS Carpe Diem... seize the day.
KEATING Very good, Mr._?
MEEKS Meeks.
KEATING Seize the day while you're young, see that you make use of your time. Why does the poet write these lines?
A STUDENT Because he's in a hurry?
KEATING Because we're food for worms, lads! Because we're only going to experience a limited number of springs, summers, and falls. One day, hard as it is to believe, each and every one of us is going to stop breathing, turn cold, and die! Stand up and peruse the faces of the boys who attended this school sixty or seventy years ago. Don't be timid, go look at them.The boys get up. Todd, Neil, Knox, Meeks, etc. go over to the class pictures that line the honor room walls.
ANGLES ON VARIOUS PICTURES ON THE WALLS. Faces of young men stare at us from out of the past.
KEATING They're not that different than any of you, are they? There's hope in their eyes, just like in yours. They believe themselves destined for wonderful things, just like many of you. Well, where are those smiles now, boys? What of that hope?
First Page ||| Next PageCf. Wordsworth's Lines & Strange fits of passion - Cf. Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet | Plato, Whom are we talking to? | Kierkegaard, My work as an author | Emerson, Self-knowledge | Gibson - McRury, Discovering one's face | Emerson, We differ in art, not in wisdom | Joyce, Portrait of the Artist
