The communication aspects of the “Dead Poets Society”

“The Dead Poets Society” is an awe inspiring film set in the 1950s about a teacher who went against the grain and taught his high school students to think for themselves and not allow their attitudes and behavior to be constrained by conformity by older generations. In our class lectures/discussions, we have touched on many aspects of human culture and communication and this movie illustrates many of these concepts. Perspectives, gender, communication theories, persuasion, language, verbal and nonverbal communication, interpersonal relationships, public speaking, intercultural communication–these are all included and exemplified in this film.

The setting of this movie is at a prestigious all boys’ high school called Welton. Many prominent schools around the country up to the 1950s still did not allow girls into their institutions at that time, but how quickly this has changed within the last half century. Nearly all schools are co-educational now, which in a large part is the result of how gender roles change so rapidly in our society. Now there are even debates going on about whether there should be a difference when we use the terms “sex” and “gender.” We can probably call this gender divide back then as sexism, or the exploitation of one sex by the other for a personal agenda. It wasn’t that women were getting taken advantage of literally but it was the fact that they did not have the right to the same education facilities as the men of the country, and thus they are confined to jobs that are within the home/family.

There are many perspectives at play in this movie. As we have learned, perspectives are different views we have on the world based on our culture and upbringing. It has to deal with how any person views the world at large or any small piece of existence. These views are often founded on one’s morals, values, beliefs and life experiences. We quickly notice how the perspectives of Neil Perry differ tremendously from his father, Mr. Perry. Because Neil comes from a middle class family, his father wishes to see him succeed by ultimately becoming a doctor. Mr. Perry knows how tough the world is and how hard it is just to stay in the middle class of America; his life experiences contribute to this selfish perspective he has on Neil’s life.

Neil wouldn’t understand his father because he hasn’t gone out into the world yet, working and struggling to make money to feed the family, so he wouldn’t know where his dad was coming from. With the same token, Mr. Perry does not understand Neil’s perspectives because he is not Neil himself and wouldn’t know Neil’s ambitions and morals and values if he doesn’t even want Neil to consider any other option besides going to medical school.

We also notice that Mr. John Keating marches to the beat of his own drum, having a different perspective from the rest of the faculty at Welton especially the director of the school, Mr. Nolan. Mr. Nolan’s perspective on running the school is based on tradition, conformity, and discipline because he has seen this kind of teaching work well in the past. It also has to do with his belief that good students are people who conform to the standards of society and uphold traditional structures. He does not believe that seventeen year olds can think for themselves yet or if anyone can ever reach that point of intellectual ability to think for themselves. Sure this kind of teaching brings out really good students and prepares them well for attending an Ivy League College but this kind of teaching neither makes them individuals nor good citizens in the future. Mr. Keating on the other hand has a completely different perspective on teaching students, especially young and impressionable seventeen year old young men.

His teachings are based on freethinking, choice, and freedom. Mr. Keating wants his students to be able to overlook societal standards and not absorb everything that they are taught but instead, step back and take a look at everything and put all this information into perspective by themselves. This way the students learn how to be individuals who have opinions and thoughts of their own without having to fall in line with the rest of the world just because higher authority figures say you must do it that way. The flaw with this kind of teaching is that it could create rebels who do not completely understand the idea of what it is to be a free thinker. It doesn’t mean that they should just turn everything into anarchy and do as they please; it just means that they should be cautious of the information they are learning because not everything they learn is completely right all the time. Sometimes we must be able to argue with the text and consider our own opinions and beliefs.

In the movie, Mr. Keating can be seen as the perfect persuader. There are four elements to having a good persuasive speech–the speech itself, the audience, the resources, and you– and Mr. Keating utilizes all four of these tools to persuade the boys. His resources are mainly a variety of poets, such as Whitman, Thoreau, and Tennyson, to back up his own thinking. His audience is probably classified as the easiest to persuade because they are all young and impressionable adolescents seeking guidance at this stage in their lives. They don’t know their paths in lives; all that they know up to this point comes from listening to their parents and teachers. The boys had been able to experience seventeen years of life on earth but that is still too early for them to make any value judgments on how the world works or how they can contribute to society as great people. They are all still on the receiving end of this process of learning to becoming adults.

The most important aspects of how Mr. Keating is so persuasive are his speeches and his passion when giving these speeches. Mr. Keating starts out the first day of classes by anchoring his philosophy in the Latin phrase “Carpe Diem,” translated to English meaning “seize the day!” He makes his students look at an old black and white picture of past students who had also attended Welton and tells them that they were all once youthful and strong just like they are now. But they did not “seize the day” and make the most of their lives while they could. They were too busy conforming to the standards of the world, trying to become something very professional and well established that they forgot the main focus on life and to value what’s most important.

Mr. Keating says that things like law, medicine, and business are important and necessary to sustain life but poetry, love, romance, beauty is what we stay alive and live for. When he was describing the Dead Poet Society back in his day, one of his lines was “poetry dripped from our tongues like honey, spirits soared, women swooned and gods were created.” With his language being strong in voice and diction, having an enigmatic yet simple structure and having the verbal directness to form a sense of urgency to take advantage of each and every day, it’s difficult for anyone to not feel his desire for the boys to become something great. He wants his students to understand that a huge part of life is just to enjoy and self indulge, being able to put your own mind at work without having to listen to others.

Another part of the reason why Mr. Keating was so impressive as a persuader was his use of nonverbal communication. Studies have shown that about fifty to seventy-five percent of communication is nonverbal. There are many nonverbal aspects of a conversation or speech that you can’t get through the verbal part, such as the emotions attached, the behavior and actions, and the importance of the topic. Nonverbal communication is powerful and is completely tied in to how you identify yourself as a person. When Mr. Keating told his students to rip out that first part of their poetry book by Mr. Prichards, it showed his anger and his fire to ignore the conventions of what makes poetry good because in Mr. Keating’s mind, poetry is emotion and heart that should not and can not be measured on some imaginary scale determined by some person who should tell us how to judge or interpret the poem.

If he had just said that Mr. Prichards was wrong without the accompaniment of page tearing, the students wouldn’t have gotten the same effect; the ripping makes his encouragement of individuality so much more powerful. There are so many examples of how Mr. Keating makes use of nonverbal communication to strengthen his persuasion. He makes his students huddle together when he wants to tell them something important to make the setting a lot more intimate so that they can sort of forget they are in a classroom and make it more like friends speaking among friends. He made his students kick soccer balls while screaming out famous literary quotes to make them have that energy and vigor, instilling in them a passion just like his own. He made his students march in the courtyard to show them how easy it is for a person to get sucked into the nature of conformity in our society. He urges us to maintain our own beliefs in the face of others even when we feel the need for acceptance; we must trust our beliefs and thoughts because they are unique and they are our own.

Even after so many lessons on individuality and free thinking, the students still fell into a uniform march, exemplifying how conformity can devour us without us even knowing. The students would not have believed him if they had not actually started marching because they would have thought they were too smart to fall into that trap all over again. The most important of Mr. Keating’s nonverbal exercises would have to be the time when he made his students walk on top of his desk. His goal was to make them see things in a different light. Sometimes we have to literally see things differently in order to think differently. He tells them to “consider what the author thinks but also consider what you think. You must strive to find your own voice because the longer you wait the less likely you are to find it. Thoreau said most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Again he’s using a famous poet, Thoreau, as his resource and letting himself and his language and emotion do the magic of persuading.

Dead Poets Society is very good at demonstrating the communication theories and interpersonal relationships. At the start of the movie, the boys were driven to befriend each other because of psychological, sociological, and pragmatic reasons. The pragmatic reason is the easiest one to understand because it is the concept that we all function off needs and desires. The boys were all pretty much trapped in that school so the only way they could fulfill their desire of communication with people was through each other. The pragmatic theory is also what drives Knox Overstreet to pursue Kris Dannenberry.

The sociological reason behind the boys forming a friendship was because of the social roles and rules they were confined to. Although they liked each other and befriended each out of want for communication with other people, they had no choice but to befriend each other because there weren’t many other people they knew of other than the people in their school. The third reason why they befriended each other was the psychological reason. They shared similar experiences, coming from similar backgrounds, and they all shared the beliefs, feelings, attitudes, and values that Mr. Keating taught so they definitely had there psychological traits in common.

The forming of friendships between the boys could also be explained by the Social Constructionist Model. This model combines the psychological and sociological aspects of the previous theory and tries to explain how friendships and relationships are determined. The model is made up of language, roles, rules, tradition, customs, culture, values and morals and the theory is that we relate best with people who have the same ratios or “mathematical equations” as we do. This makes a lot of sense because they were all similar in these traits so no wonder they became such good friends so fast.

We could probably categorize the group that the boys and Mr. Keating had as a small institutional group. The only reason why I would say small group instead of large group is that they were all pretty intimate towards one another and it seemed like they had a strong bond with the exception of Richard Cameron. Within this group there were dyadic and triadic relationships. For example Todd and Neil would be a dyadic relationship, a relationship between two people. And if you add in the guidance of Mr. Keating to the mix, this could easily turn out to be a triadic relationship, a three person relationship. We could also categorize the relationship between Neil and Mr. Keating as a primary dyadic relationship in terms of morals and values because Mr. Keating had more of an effect on Neil than his own parents. Each boy in the group had a different role as well. For example, Neil was the smart, optimistic, and loved leader of the group. Charles Dalton would be the daring rebellious one with a good heart and Todd would be the shy quiet one who was searching for an identity.

We can actually try to understand Todd better by looking into his family dynamics. With his older brother being so intelligent and successful, a lot is expected of Todd. Because of people constantly reminding him of how big of shoes he is going to have to fill, this starts having a counter effect on him. He is shy and low self-esteemed and unwilling to open himself up to other people. He begins to worry about what happens if he can’t live up to the expectations put on him. But thankfully, Mr. Keating is there to pull him out of this rut and show him that he doesn’t have to follow in line with his brother. He is an individual himself and that whatever he says is worthy and special in a unique way different from anybody else.