Apoorva Choudhary

the ending of dps is incredibly bittersweet keating wise. yes, of course he is grateful that the poets stood up for him, and yes that was incredibly brave, but in the end it is still too little too late. he is still inevitability fired whether or not anyone stood on their desks.

im torn on whether or not keating would return to teaching, but i am leaning toward yes. both as an homage to neil, and as a way to remain true to his core values. HOWEVER, it will likely be a very long time before he's ready to return if he's given the opportunity. he's got a lot to process, grieve, and work through in a multitude of different areas before he's at all ready to be back in a classroom.

one of the biggest things he needs to come to terms with is the fact that neil's death was not his fault, despite everyone in a position of authority around him saying so. speaking from experience, greif can very often lead you to a place where you feel at fault for a lot of things, not exclusively the death itself. when a family member of mine passed away, it of course was not anything that i caused (she passed at 21 due to complications with chemo) and i knew that, but being left alone to process something as catastrophic as death can very easily give you a chance to find some way to be "at fault". me personally, i blamed myself for not making an effort to talk to her. i can only assume keating feels the same way, constantly hoping he was able to reach neil in a more effective way. keating is extremely intelligent emotionally, yes, but even the most sound of mind people can draw rash conclusions in a situation like this.

touching more on keating's emotional intelligence, i think the true extent of it very often get overlooked. we see the most obvious examples with todd, accurately calling him out in front of the class and using that to motivate him, but he is very aware with the rest of the boys as well. in neil's case, it's made apparent that keating did know neil was lying about talking to his father, it's up to your interpretation as to when he realises it though. personally i think he was able to tell immediately during his second conversation with neil, but ive seen others say he didnt realise until after the play. anyway, delving into theory territory, i think his extreme emotional intelligence made it obvious to keating that neil thought of him as some sort of father figure, whether neil knew it or not. there's no argument that he knew he had a responsibility for all of the boys, but neil was particularly vulnerable due to his relationship with his father. that knowledge only adds to the guilt he feels about neil.

all of these things combined will DRASTICALLY change the way he goes about teaching any future classes. not fundamentally, i highly doubt that he'll abandon his alternative lesson style. but i think he'll make a big change from a more flippant, carefree approach (take that lightly, i find his lessons to be incredibly well thought out, but more in the moment than anything) to a much, MUCH more methodical one. he'd take extra time to think over both how to take risks in a SAFE way, as well as how each lesson can be interpreted by someone in ANY mental situation. now, this isnt to say any of his lessons shown in the movie fail to do either of those things, i think they pass with flying colours, but this is from the perspective of a guilty feeling keating. his spark will DEFINITELY not go away, in fact i think the time he takes in those areas will not only make him an even more incredible teacher, but will make him far more approachable to a student. (even more so than he already is)