Dead Poets Society: A Case Study for Understanding Palo Alto Suicides?
Last night I watched the film Dead Poets Society again for the second time in over twenty years. With fresh eyes. Having had new experiences in my life.
When the movie first came out in 1989, I was a freshman in high school. All of the quotes from English literature were still subjects yet to be covered in my classes. Things I had to look forward to in AP English, my senior year. There were quotes from Alfred, Lord Tennyson, that my brother (seven years older than me) had used in his valedictory speech, so I remembered them. But the entire high school experience and college application process were still ahead of me at that time.
So in 1989, I saw the movie as a story about some kids at boarding school. Also a foreign concept to me. I had yet to attend Harvard, where classmates across the hall or upstairs from me had actually gone to schools like “Welton Academy”, wore uniforms, had stayed in dorms before, and came from families whose last names were written on the fronts of buildings on the Harvard campus.
I remember not really understanding the suicide of Neil Perry in the movie (spoiler alert). It didn’t register as something real. I had not yet experienced my own desperation, my own feelings of being trapped, my own anger at being dismissed for the passions of my wild heart. I saw it as another plot element, secondary to a story about an inspiring and unconventional teacher who loved poetry.
But last night, I saw it differently. I saw John Keating (Robin Williams’ character) as a life coach, awakening the creativity, imagination, and passion in his students, and encouraging them -- imploring them -- to stretch beyond their comfort zones and to see beyond the walls of the Gothic architecture around them. I saw each of the boys become one notch braver, starting from where they were and taking risks they previously thought impossible.
In the scene where Mr. Keating instructs the entire class to tear out all the pages of the introductory section to their poetry textbook, written by a dry academic attempting to establish “metrics” for good poetry, I saw in the boys’ experience a parallel to my own personal experience, at age 35, of being told, “Play the wrong note.” The boys, normally obedient to any teacher’s request, pause a beat upon hearing Mr. Keating’s instructions. Against the backdrop of an institution valuing order, tradition, obedience, and conformity, the act of tearing out the pages of a textbook represented rebellion of the highest order. It would be the first step in opening the door to their full humanity, dangerous and wonderful.
The arc of Neil Perry’s character should be included as a case study for anyone attempting to understand the Palo Alto high school student suicides. I have watched this conversation evolve, erupt, and blossom over the past year into national conversation on mental illness, school homework policies, college admissions criteria, and stress management. However, sometimes it’s a complex story of an individual that illuminates the unexplainable, showing us that we cannot grasp with our logical mind what the human heart and soul have the capacity to be. That our own weaknesses will likely stay hidden from our own view. And that at the end of the day, all we may have to offer is our ability to feel - even our grief - deeply and fully.
The last words exchanged between Neil Perry and his father are quoted below:
[Neil's father has just driven him home from his performance in "A Midsummer Night's Dream."]
Mr. Perry: We're trying very hard to understand why it is that you insist on defying us. Whatever the reason, we're not gonna let you ruin your life. Tomorrow I'm withdrawing you from Welton and enrolling you in Braighton Military School. You're going to Harvard, and you're gonna be a doctor.
Neil Perry: But, that's ten more years! Father, that's a *lifetime*!
Mr. Perry: Oh, stop it! Don't be so dramatic! You make it sound like a prison term! You don't understand, Neil! You have opportunities that I never even dreamt of, and I am not going to let you waste them!
Neil Perry: I've got to tell you what I feel!
Mrs. Perry: We've been so worried about you!
Mr. Perry: *What*? What? Tell me what you feel! What is it? Is it more of this, this *acting* business? Because you can forget that! What?
Neil Perry: [pauses] Nothing.
Mr. Perry: [pauses] Nothing? Well, then, let's go to bed.
That Mr. Perry considers his son’s excitement about acting to be an “insistence on defying us” reflects the narcissistic view that everything a child does is directed personally toward the parent.
“You’re going to Harvard, and you’re gonna be a doctor.” Need I say more? Been there, done that.
And the response to Neil’s final effort to claim his voice, “I’ve got to tell you what I feel!”, is met with hostility and contempt. “What! What! Tell me what you feel! What is it! Is it more of this, this ‘acting’ business? Because you can forget that!”
Last spring, when I attended the community meeting at Palo Alto High School, filled with hundreds of parents seeking to learn more about “why” and “how” and what they can do about teen suicides, I noticed the handouts giving instructions about how to listen, how to ask “open-ended questions”, how to pay attention to changes in their child’s moods.
They talked about encouraging students to seek help. To admit to their own illness. That there is no stigma to having a diagnosis of depression or anxiety disorder.
And now I look at the story of Neil Perry. Was he mentally ill? Perhaps at the moment he pulled the trigger. But at every moment of the story before he went to his father’s desk drawer to get the gun he used to kill himself, we wouldn’t have considered him mentally ill. We would have called him a model student, balancing all of his academics with his extracurricular interests. Following his passions. Leading.
Did he seek help? Yes. He went to the only person he could trust with the tenderness of his own dreams. Mr. Keating. Who gave him this speech:
Neil Perry: I just talked to my father. He's making me quit the play at Henley Hall. Acting's everything to me. I- But he doesn't know! He- I can see his point; we're not a rich family, like Charlie's. We- But he's planning the rest of my life for me, and I- He's never asked me what I want!
John Keating: Have you ever told your father what you just told me? About your passion for acting? You ever showed him that?
Neil Perry: I can't.
John Keating: Why not?
Neil Perry: I can't talk to him this way.
John Keating: Then you're acting for him, too. You're playing the part of the dutiful son. Now, I know this sounds impossible, but you have to talk to him. You have to show him who you are, what your heart is!
Neil Perry: I know what he'll say! He'll tell me that acting's a whim and I should forget it. They're counting on me; he'll just tell me to put it out of my mind for my own good.
John Keating: You are not an indentured servant! It's not a whim for you, you prove it to him by your conviction and your passion! You show that to him, and if he still doesn't believe you - well, by then, you'll be out of school and can do anything you want.
Neil Perry: No. What about the play? The show's tomorrow night!
John Keating: Then you have to talk to him before tomorrow night.
Neil Perry: Isn't there an easier way?
John Keating: No.
Neil Perry: [laughs] I'm trapped!
John Keating: No you're not.
“I’m trapped!”, Neil says with a laugh.
He keeps silent and ends up lying to Mr. Keating about having confronted his dad. He chooses to go ahead with the play and take his chances with his dad. Was this the decision that made him mentally ill? We have no reason to suspect that he is planning his suicide. In fact, it may have been something that occurred to him only after receiving the news that he would be forced to withdraw from school the next day, and follow his father’s orders.
The point is: We. Don’t. Know.
As the movie came to a close, I wondered why this film hasn’t been talked about in the context of Palo Alto. Of course, the movie gives us clues to this also. Welton Academy’s headmaster responds to the suicide by launching a “thorough investigation” into the matter, which leads to the dismissal of Mr. Keating. Easier to clean things up that way. When there’s someone to blame.
In the case of Palo Alto, there is a full-scale community effort directed at mental health response teams, wellness counselors, railway security monitoring, and the like.
Would these policies -- or even gun control -- have helped prevent someone like Neil Perry from pulling the trigger?
Or is the call and the cry from Neil’s story urging us to feel more deeply, to see beyond our own agendas, and accept that life is not a problem to be solved?
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