What It's Like To Watch "Dead Poets Society" For The First Time — buzzfeed.com

The first time I saw The Dead Poets Society was the day after Robin Williams died. It was at the urging of someone who said carpe diem, which I later realized was a reference to the film. There is a scene in the movie where John Keating, the beloved English teacher played by Robin Williams, takes his class outside to walk around in a courtyard to “illustrate the point of conformity,” as he says. He directs three boys to start walking around, and as their steps all fall into the same rhythm, he says, “Ah, there it is.” He tells them to stop. “If you’ll notice, everyone started off with their own stride, their own pace,” he tells the young men. We all crave acceptance, he goes on, but despite “the difficulty of maintaining your own beliefs in the face of others,” we must resist conformity. He quotes Robert Frost: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.”

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