"You must strive to find your own voice. Because 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." Don't be resigned to that. Break out!" Like a voice in my consciousness, John Keating's words in the movie, The Dead Poet's Society, became imprinted upon my memory, unyielding and resolute. The movie itself is a masterpiece, an inspirational tale of finding one's voice, breaking out of the mold, in an endless sea of people who strive for little more than the safety and comforts of society's limitations.
The Dead Poet's Society is a film that depicts the lives of a group of young, aristocratic men, bound for a path already set according to their lineage, and the unlikely teacher who cured the ignorance and monotony of life. These young men, are students of Welton Academy, a boarding school designed to educate the elite in discipline, and excellence. A school that put an emphasis on the importance of tradition and structure. The semester was primed to begin, and parents left their children in the hands of Welton Academy and its anti-romantic administration with the hopes of raising future doctors and lawyers. With such heavy burdens placed upon the backs of the young men, namely, Neil Perry, and Todd Anderson, life as it seemed, was balanced upon a very thin line between reality and dreams. These two young man, though different in nature, offered an in-depth view into the world that the elite must conquer. Neil Perry was an ambitious, brilliant and influential fellow, whose life catered to the plans and whims of his inflexible father. His whole life is rigid, prearranged in every aspect from extracurricular activities to his future. Todd on the other hand, is introverted, and painfully mindful of his older brother's great shadow in which he follows willfully.
It was not until the unexpected coming of a new English teacher, John Keating, a Welton Alumnus, did the line blur.