Imagine that you are standing upon the desk. Could you guess how the view looks like? Everything will felt in a different way that you never feel even though you are familiar to the objects. For example, a chair looks like very small and low because you stares it from top to bottom.
In the movie Dead Poets Society, Professor John Keating said, “I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things a different way. The world looks very different up here . . .” I think he wanted to teach his students the way how they can think with different perspectives and become critical. It is his metaphor to use the desk in this quote. People usually do not stand on the desk, so it can be a kind of unusual experiences. In that time in the movie, especially in boarding school, students had to be follow the rules and behaved only upon the rules. Their thinking were stereotyped since they were taught to be as same as everyone, not the exception. Although when they learned literature, they still followed the author’s thinking, not their own. Thus, the professor wanted to make them more open-minded.
In the last scene in this movie, the professor was fired from the school because of the suicide of the student. School thought the professor was responsible for this death because he encouraged the student to do what he really wanted. However, other students did not think that it was his fault; hence, most students who thought the professor is right showed their respecting with standing on the desk. The professor failed to change the whole school or society, but it looks clear that these students who affected by the professor will change the world in some good and unordinary ways.
