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Dead Poets Do Tell Tales Steven M. Cross
Bismarck R-V High School, Missouri Be honest. If you were 16 or 17 years old working 20-30 hours a week and spending what little free time you had doing homework, participating in extra-curricular activities, or hanging around with friends, which would you rather do: read a book or see a movie? Today's teenagers have grown up with radio and CDs, VCRs, cable and satellite television, Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and thousands of other high-tech toys and tools. Educators cannot afford to ignore this background and hope teenagers will dutifully read the classics assigned to them. Nor can they ignore an obvious fact: music and movies have become a popular literary form and, in my opinion, should be treated as such.
Rather than ignore this reality, we should use it to our advantage. In my classes, I use the film Dead Poets Society (Touchstone Pictures, directed by Peter Weir) to give my students what has developed into a very memorable short course on the elements of fiction. Not only do students relate to the film, but they also are introduced to the beauty of poetry and the power of language.
SETTING
One of the important elements of fiction is setting. In Dead Poets Society setting is crucial. I ask my students, "Could this particular story have taken place in a different setting?" The answer is no for several reasons. The school was a traditional preparatory school which severely restricted individual freedom as one of the prerequisites of preparing the students for the kinds of professional jobs their parents wanted them to pursue. The setting reflects the conflict between conformity and freedom of choice. The preparatory school represented restriction, and the rest of the setting--the public school and the play Neil tried out for--represented freedom. Finally, it was no accident that Neil Perry killed himself in the winter, the season symbolically associated with death.
CHARACTERIZATION
Another important element of literature is characterization. Dead Poets Society reveals a variety of characterization elements. Todd Anderson or Charlie Dalton is a perfect example of a dynamic character who...