Incandescently | Dead Poets Society

Two

"It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight." Vladimir Nabokov 

"It must be nice to finish your school day with your father's lesson," Neil comments as we walk into Father's classroom, him carrying a large stack of school books whilst I carry my personal belongings inside my leather book bag. I nod in agreement, rather excited to be taught by Father for the first time; I know how passionate he is about poetry and literature, but I have never been taught by him in an actual classroom, so I am intrigued as to how he will approach teaching students.

The classroom fills with a general bubble of chattering and whispering as it fills with students, crumpled balls of paper being hurled from the back of the room and mumbled complaints about the workload already placed upon them all after one day. I take a seat beside Neil, roughly in the middle of the room, just as the door at the end of the classroom swings open rather dramatically to reveal Father. 

He walks across the room, carrying a small clipboard whilst whistling Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture and when he makes it to the classroom entrance, he simply walks out and continues to whistle in the corridor. When I glance over to Neil, we both chuckle slightly with a hint of confusion as we hear him call the classroom out into the hallway. So we both leave our books and belongings at our desks and walk outside into the corridor, followed by the rest of the classroom, as I stand at the front of the group and Neil disappears into the back.

"O Captain, my Captain," Father starts, drawing everyone's attention back to him, "who knows where that comes from?" There is an awkward break of silence, apart from a boy who blows his nose rather loudly, where no one responds to Father's question. Knowing the reference, I raise my hand and when he gestures to me, I answer. "It's from a poem written by Walt Whitman in regards to Sir Abraham Lincoln."

Father nods his head and, turning to look over the class, states that they all may call him either Mr. Keating or 'O Captain, my Captain', if they dare to. "Now, let me dispel a few rumours so they don't fester into facts," he continues, after which he admits to attending this very same academy and that he looked rather different to how he does now, a few chuckles coming from the students behind me. He then proceeds to pick out a student within the group, which happens to be Gerard, to read out the first stanza of a certain poem that contains the sentiment, 'Gather ye rosebuds while ye may'.

When the class is then again asked about what the sentiment means, with the Latin version of it being 'carpe diem', I see Steven next to me raise his hand and answers that it means 'seize the day'.  Father acknowledges the correct answer in addition to Steven's unusual last name, and then proceeds to ask why the writer chose to use the specific words he did, to which Charle jokingly comments that the writer is in a hurry.

"No, ding!" Father exclaims, imitating the sound of a show bell, "thank you for playing, anyway... because we are food for worms. Because, believe it or not, each and every one of us in this room is one day going to stop breathing, turn cold and die." As everyone around me exchanges glances with one another, Father asks everyone to step closer to the glass cabinet in front of us, housing several framed photographs and competition trophies. He asks us all to take a closer look at the contents, claiming that whilst most of the have walked past the cabinet countless times before, he does not believe that real attention has been paid towards them. 

Father ends up whispering 'carpe diem' a handful of times behind the group, before telling us all to seize the day and make our lives extraordinary. He then leads us back inside the classroom and once everyone is sat back in their seats, he reveals that they are going to focus on poetry to begin with and asks anyone to tell the class their favourite piece of poetry. Again like the beginning of the lesson, no one raises their hands in the air, so I offer to reveal my personal favourite.