Dead Poets Society1989

His first lesson is unorthodox by Welton standards, whistling the 1812 Overture and taking them out of the classroom to focus on the idea of carpe diem (Latin for 'seize the day') by looking at the pictures of former Welton students in a trophy case. In a later class Keating has Neil read the introduction to their poetry textbook, a staid, dry essay entitled "Understanding Poetry" by the fictional academic Dr. J. Evans Pritchard, Ph. D., which describes how to place the quality of a poem on a scale, and rate it with a number. Keating finds the idea of such mathematical literary criticism ridiculous and encourages his pupils to rip the introductory essay out of their textbooks. After a brief reaction of disbelief, they do so gleefully as Keating congratulates them with the memorable line "Begone, J. Evans Pritchard, Ph. D"(much to the surprise and disbelief of one of Keating's colleagues). He later has the students stand on his desk as a reminder to look at the world in a different way, just as Henry David Thoreau intended when he wrote, "The universe is wider than our views of it" (Walden).