Dead Poets Society, The Catcher in the Rye, and Blue Flower Power

Dead Poets Society

Dead Poets Society captures the Romantic spirit: creativity, nonconformity, and the search for meaning.

The film is set in a rigid 1950s prep school, and follows a group of students and their charismatic English teacher, John Keating (Robin Williams), who inspires them to break free from societal expectations.

"Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary."

Eugène Delacroix, Liberty Leading the People 1830

Keating urges them to find their voices—to live deliberately. In one scene, he leads the students into a cave to shout their names into the dark. This isn’t just theater—it’s a metaphor for the self echoing back. They're declaring: I exist. I matter. And the echo is saying I hear you. Self experession turns into self recognition—the Romantic ideal. A voice carried out into the world, and something sacred comes back.

Which brings us to the why:

"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for." -Keating

Poetry, for Keating, isn’t ornamental—it’s oxygen.

The Catcher in the Rye: The Romantic Rebel

Holden Caulfield, like Keating’s students, is stuck in a world that feels fake. But unlike them, he has no guide— just a restless hunger for meaning.

Authenticity

Holden rejects the “phoniness” of adult life. He lies compulsively, not to deceive, but to escape expectations and "performing" for others.

Honoré Daumier – The Third-Class Carriage (c. 1862

"I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible."

He craves honesty. His younger sister Phoebe represents that for him. She’s still uncorrupted, still real.

Individualism

Holden resists society’s expectations and sees himself as a “catcher in the rye”—someone who protects this innocence of childhood:

Van Gogh The Sower with Setting Sun, c.1888

"I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be."

It’s naïve, sure—but it’s also Romantic. He sees beauty in protecting what’s pure.

Transcendence

At the Museum of Natural History, Holden reflects on the comfort of permanence:

Caspar David Friedrich - Die Lebensstufen (ca. 1834)

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole... Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you."

He’s looking for something unmoving, something real. Romantic transcendence for Holden isn’t about the divine—it’s about finding stillness in a world of noise (see “The Scent of Time”).

Takeaway

Dead Poets Society says: seize the day. Catcher says: stay real.

Both reflect the Romantic belief that life holds more than just what society expects of us. It's about protecting what makes us human... and listening for that echo of your name in the dark.