What Do You Do with Longing?
- Oct 28, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 19
Dead Poets Society, The Catcher in the Rye, and the search for something more.
One of my favorite lines in any movie comes from Dead Poets Society:
"We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life...
But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."
I remember seeing that movie and hearing that line and thinking yes, that's it! This quote was kind of floating in my head for most of the time that I was working on Sparkle Valley.
Another character I always loved was Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye. And on the face of it, there wouldn't seem to be a direct connection here, but I think there is.
Both Keating and Caulfield sense something missing in the world. That's why I love these characters. Neither one of them is satisfied. Both think that the world needs to be larger, deeper, and more meaningful than the version that they are dealing with. In other words, they're both driven by a type of longing.
But here’s where it gets interesting, the difference is what they do with that.
Keating answers yes.
In Dead Poets Society, he identifies all the pressures that we all know: conformity, expectations, the deadening of spirit. But his response isn't withdrawal, it's engagement.
“Carpe Diem. Seize the day. Make your life extraordinary.”
And just to be clear, he's not telling his students to just rebel for the heck of it. That's not it at all. He's telling his students to participate in life more fully—keep your passion, your soul. Read poetry, take risks, fall in love. So his answer to longing is a big yes. And he’s not saying that life will be easy, you will have set backs, you will grieve. But life is something you have to show up for.
Holden Caulfield, on the other hand, is still searching.
He's also dealing with the same type of issues. But he doesn't have a Keating. He doesn't have that mentor, or any clear path forward. So when he looks at the adult world, he sees all this phoniness. But he wants honesty. He wants something real. And his younger sister, Phoebe, represents that because she's still connected to that something that he fears that we've all lost.
And that's why his fantasy of becoming a Catcher in the Rye is so poignant (and sad).
"I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be." -Holden
Here he's trying to protect innocence itself. Just like Keating, he recognizes that something precious is slipping away.
But unlike Keating, he doesn’t know what to do to save himself. His response then is to turn on the world. He becomes frustrated, isolated.
And that's the link between the stories. They both have this hunger. They're both asking the same question:
How do you remain fully alive in the world that feels so artificial?.
Keating's answer is poetry. Caulfield's answer is resistance. One chooses action, the other gets trapped.
This is where the Blue Flower comes in. Because that's what this longing is.
And that's maybe why, despite the tragic ending, Dead Poets Society feels so optimistic and hopeful, while Catcher in the Rye is actually heartbreaking. Both characters feel the same pull toward something deeper and more meaningful. The difference is that Keating finds a way to follow it. while Holden is still searching.
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