Proudly Weird

“Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are all noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life.  But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” The above quote was delivered by Mr. John Keating, played by Robin Williams, in Peter Weir’s 1989 American drama Dead Poets Society, which won an Academy Award in the subsequent year. "It is an uncynical, idealistic and hopeful film," The Guardian. The story revolves around an English poetry teacher, Mr. Keating, striving to make his students to find their own voice and “… to live deep and suck out all the marrow out of life!” On the first day of their classes, the students are told by the new English teacher to rip out the introduction of their poetry books which explained a mathematical formula used for rating poetry, to make the students to think for themselves. In this lesson only, we first hear the remarkable Latin expression, Carpe Diem . They were also told to take turns standing on Ke...