O Captain! My Captain! Trivia Quiz

Answer: He whistles and walks out the door.

This first scene shows the difference between Mr. Keating and the rest of the faculty at the school. He does not introduce himself, or give them a schedule, or ask them to open their textbooks, but walks through the class and out the door, to teach his first lesson in the hallway. Two of the answers given are things he does later on, but they are not the first thing he did.

Answer: Seize the day

Teachers who tend to follow the idea of Carpe Diem tend to do things differently. For example, Mr. Keating, in an early scene, asks the students to turn to a certain page in their text book, and then asks them to rip it out. Well, it needn't be said that this does not go over very well with the administrators of the school.

This saying was taken from a poem entitled "Odes" written by Horace (no last name) in 23 BC.

Answer: Be fluent with its meter, rhyme, and figures of speech

This is the page that Mr. Keating asks the students to rip out during the first class they have with him. In the ending scene, the stand-in teacher has a student read from his copy of the book, because all the pages were ripped out in their copies. The juxtaposition of the stand-in teacher praising J. Evans Pritchard as writing an excellent essay with Mr. Keating describing him as excrement shows a difference in perspective by the two teachers.

Answer: Medicine

I thought it quite a coincidence that the actor who played Neil, Robert Sean Leanard, also ended up playing a doctor in the series "House" as Dr. James Wilson. It seems he will be forever be destined to have something to do with medicine. In the movie, Neil eventually kills himself because of his father's hard stance on Neil's future.

Answer: It is a club that Mr. Keating was in when he went to school there.

Mr. Keating tells the students that he used to sneak out of school at night, and convene in a cave with a bunch of other students to initiate meetings of the Dead Poet's Society. His present students decide to initiate the same society, and sneak out at night to do so, in the same vein as Mr. Keating when he was a student there.

Answer: Discipline, excellence, tradition, and honor

This sign is shown very quickly at the beginning, with a big fanfare and bagpipes following it. The school is very much a no-nonsense school, focused more on discipline and tradition then in learning beneficial information. Mr. Keating throws the idea of discipline and tradition out the window, while still following the doctrines of excellence and honor.

Answer: The Realists

Mr. Keating taught differently in that he skipped over certain sections of the book, went through others, but mostly disregarded the book entirely. His ideology was that one could learn more from actual poetry and actual life than one could from a textbook. It was a very nontraditional method of teaching for that school.

Answer: A marching exercise

He first got three of the students to march together until their footsteps had the same rhythm. And then he got everyone to walk their own silly way. It reminded me of the Monty Python skit "Ministry of Silly Walks". This is another example of a non-traditional method of teaching, not to mention that it gives these serious students a chance to be silly.

Answer: Because we are members of the human race

In the scene where he says this, the viewer can really see the passion Mr. Keating has for poetry, and, more importantly, Walt Whitman. Poetry is a human invention, and as such, we should take advantage of this prestigious opportunity.

Answer: The sweaty-toothed madman

His full quote is, "A sweaty-toothed madman with a stare that pounds my brain." From looking at the picture, I have no idea how someone can be sweaty-toothed, but that is the beauty of poetry. Innovative thinking and imagination, creating pictures in our minds that are not the normal pictures one usually has.