Dead Poet Society

“I want to make them free thinkers” says Mr Keating to Mr McAllister. This essay will define the meaning of “free thinker”, its importance to the young men of Mr Keating's class, the meaning of Mr Keating's statement and finally the different impacts that this new way of thinking has on the boys.

A “Freethinker” as defined by The Macquarie Dictionary is “someone who forms their opinions independently of authority or tradition, especially in matters of religion”. Therefore a free thinker is someone who can produce ideas for themselves and is not solely reliant on the thoughts and actions of others to predetermine their life path. To pass from childhood to adulthood is usually an adjustment from following the rules and regulations of figures in society such as parents and teachers to making conscience independent decisions about future actions based on one's own beliefs and ideas. Often this pathway is a difficult voyage and those who go through are usually aided by mentors that they can get guidance from. Mr Keating in the Dead Poets Society was such a mentor for a group of confused young men who had been used to convention and stifling of creativity and freethinking all of their time at Welton Preparatory School for Boys.

What Mr Keating means by “i want to make them free thinkers” is that he wants the young men of his English class all to live a fulfilled life and to do this they must stop following the set structure like a herd of sheep following one and another For example in the movie “Dead Poet Society” when Mr Keating gets all the boys within his English class to ripe out the introduction entitled “Understanding Poetry” by Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph.D. Evans explains Poetry by being able to be graded on a graph to determan if a poem is good or not. Mr Keating gets the boys to understand that you can not tell if a poem is good or not by a graph but by how much it means to you and the way it makes you feel. This is becoming a free thinker not using a set structure but actually understanding and appreciating it. He also believes that you can not set an age where free thinking should begin and it should be something that happens all throughout life. For the boys to learn and accomplish the things that Mr Keating wants them to within his class, they must think with there minds and not using a book. However he does not want the boys to become foolish and pull off stupid stunts which can affect their chance to learn and miss out on his class,. For example when Charlie does the stunt in the assembly where he rings a bell and holds up a phone towards Mr Nolan and says that it is god and he thinks they should have girls at Welton. All the boys believe that Mr Keating would be happy but to their amazement he is not and more disappointed with Charlie because as he explains there is a time and a place for those kind of actions.

Free thinking is an important thing because it lets everybody think and behave in different ways, For example if everybody lived life out of a book the actions and emotions would not vary from person to person and this would make life very boring, But whys is free thinking important? To be able to make people and in the movies case the boys truly appreciate Poems and life in general the boys need to learn to become free thinkers. Mr Keating tries to explain to the boys that they must do something that they are passionate