Insight #1 from The Dead Poets Society Movie— “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time”
Carpe Diem — Seize The Day.
Introduction
The Dead Poets Society movie was lying around on my watch list for quite some time, and so was I jobless in my room, for a long ass time. So I thought of giving it a watch and oh my, one of the best decisions of my life.
Let me give you a few words about this movie before we go ahead with the theme of this post.
This movie communicates the idea of redirecting the norm of training students like robots, to guide them to be able to think for themselves.
It shows how Mr.Keating(Robin Williams), a new English poetry teacher, tries to inject a dose of passion, into a conservative boarding school of business and medicine named Welton, which needless to say, is filled with and surrounded by lifeless technicality, a heavy dose of logic, and solid methods of teaching.
In the story-line, the Dead Poet Society is a group of students founded by Keating and his fellow friends during their school days. Their sole motto to assemble in a nearby forest cave every night was to read out their favorite poems to each other.
The quoted verse I put below was read out at the beginning of their meeting and will reveal their intentions even clearer.
“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not lie, and not when I had to come to die, discover that I had not lived”.
The whole movie fundamentally is a voyage that surfs the students from an empty colorless deserted island to a realm full of meaning, while they face certain harsh waves, and Keating here is the Captain of the ship.
In fact, in his first lecture, he commands his pupils to call him either Keating or “Oh captain, my captain”(he prefers this more. I mean anyone would).
The movie has to offer many insights to its audience, and this is me trying to write and elaborate on my understanding of it to understand them even more.
Let’s get going.
Captain: Open your hymnal (Book of hymns) to page 542 and read the first stanza of the poem.
Pitts(student): To The Virgins to Make Much Of Time?
Captain: That’s the one.
“Gather ye rosebuds while ya may, Old time is still a-flying, and this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying”.
Why is the poet asking us to gather the rosebuds, while we can? What’s the hurry?
I would say he is directing our attention to the certainty that we all are going to perish someday, and that Time waits for no one. Many glorious and horrid men have come and gone, but time hasn’t waited for anyone. It is an absolute objective in its nature. It flies without hesitation and leaves no impression on itself by people’s actions. It reflects its nature under yours.
Captain reminds us that this thrilling voyage of life is momentary, and we are merely a temporary crew. We get to sail a limited number of seasons until our destination arrives. After that, we get off, eternally.
You are the flower that smiles today and will wither tomorrow.
But wait, the whole tone of this narrative, somewhat means that our existence then has no point. We are born into this world, for nothing. The fact that we are nothing but bare food for worms and part of the food cycle makes everything meaningless. Well, if that is so then we don’t matter at all, right?
It’s pretty vanilla to think that way, however, it’s still interesting.
Why would Captain teach his crew this on their first sail if this was the concluding meaning?
Before we get to that, here’s a section from one of my favorite game series intro songs,
The Walking Dead Season 4.
Sometimes I don’t know where this dirty road is taking me,
sometimes I don’t know the reason why,
so I guess I’ll keep gambling,
lots of booze and lots of rambling,
it’s easier than just waiting around to die.
It’s true, that everything will expire but that does not make the journey worthless.
The scarcity of time and knowledge of death puts meaning in our lives and further creates the urge to do something about it.
Till the time you have your feet on the wooden plank, you must find your role, which makes you savor the voyage and makes you help your crew as well.
Passing time with the elderly ones is one way to grasp this notion and probably one of the fitting ways to handle procrastination. You get to have a third-hand experience of death, and loneliness. You get to witness the limits of human biology. You get to know about their regrets, their suffering, the things they did, the things they didn’t do, things that matter, and the things that don’t.
I am in my final year of college, and it feels like yesterday when I was in 6th grade, ranting about how fast my summer holidays had ended, and desperate for the next vacation to come.
But another question that comes up in my mind after all this, is what exactly does it mean to seize the day? How should I seek my role? What should I exactly do?
That can be a topic of introspection for another day.
That’s pretty much it for this post, hope you found anything insightful.
Take Cares,
Byes.
Extras: The original interpretation of this poem is about enlightening women that their beauty is bounded with time and they should utilize it to their full potential by not being shy but by going out and gathering rosebuds, which is a metaphor for love/sex.
