lee

Neil Perry: directing and performing a segment of Antigone by Sophocles in front of his whole class and not getting a single extra mark for it

Todd Anderson: having to write a poem about the meaning of his life for literature class and spending the whole evening crying because life had no meaning and he would disappoint his favourite teacher

Charlie Dalton: convincing his classmates to start an anarchy against their english teacher and being one of the two people who actually went along with it when they teacher threatened to lower grades

Knox Overstreet: being ghosted by his situationship for his ex who happened to be dating his other ex

Richard Cameron: staying up until 3AM studying every night and having an absolute meltdown when he got manhandled to bed

Steven Meeks: having to be pulled out of school early because a pen corrector exploded in his mouth and he accidentally swallowed it

First of all, Cameron is a kid. He's a scared and confused and stressed out kid who just lost a friend to suicide and he doesn't know how to process it which is why he's so quick to blame Keating. Which is the same thing that Todd did when he blamed Neil's father. The loss of a friend is hard for anyone, especially for kids/young adults that age, and ESPECIALLY if that person died by suicide. Your brain doesn't know how to make sense of it, so you jump to blame something or someone else for it. You can see examples of this when you look at conspiracies surrounding celebrities that committed suicide (Kurt Cobain is the first one that comes to mind for me) and how their spouses or other people that were close to them often get accused of murdering their loved one or at the very least are blamed for their death in some way.

I also agree with Cameron to an extent. Keating wasn't completely innocent and he did contribute to Neil's death. He acted more like a friend to his students when he should have been a responsible adult and teacher and should have properly cautioned them against doing things that would have negative consequences, ESPECIALLY when he basically encouraged Neil to disobey his father. We also don't really see Keating have any positive interactions with Cameron, literally the closest thing we get to that is just him poking fun at Cameron. Keating also didn't handle Todd's anxiety in the best way, I know for a fact that if I would've been thrown into a situation like the improvisational poem scene when I'd moved to a new school back in my junior year I would have vomited just due to the anxiety alone. But anyways, Keating just feels like the parent who doesn't care if their kid wears a seatbelt, he has that mindset of "oh it'll be fine that bad stuff won't happen to us" until it does. And then you're fucked. I have had teachers like Mr. Keating before, who didn't care much about making progress and cared more about being friends with their students, which is how I went through THREE YEARS of guitar class without making any real progress. They just let kids goof off and do whatever they wanted instead of actually teaching that class.

We also repeatedly see Cameron being excluded or ignored by the poets, first when he's against the idea of joining the dead poets society and is eventually pressured into it, and again when he tries to tell his story in the cave and everyone stops him because they've apparently heard it before and they don't care about Cameron enough to let him just tell his story again. He's also ignored by Charlie many times during the whole girls in the cave and having girls at Welton debacle. This, and the previously mentioned weird treatment from Mr. Keating, would understandably cause Cameron to be a bit distant from the rest of the group. The only person that ever really tries to include him is Neil, when he invited Cameron to their study group.

I don't think that Cameron's "betrayal" even truly counts as a betrayal. I really do think that he had the best interests of his friends in mind, even if he was a bit misguided, and while it was wrong for him to try to place all of the blame on Keating, you can't say that while defending Todd for blaming Neil's father. And yes, while Neil's father is mainly to blame for the death of his son due to his overbearing (and implied to be abusive) parenting, Keating is also partially to blame for Neil's death because he was not giving Neil the proper guidance that he needed and for encouraging his reckless behavior and especially for encouraging Neil to disobey his father. Keating repeatedly stepped over the student-teacher boundary in a way that was inappropriate. I don't think that Cameron "throwing Keating under the bus" was a selfish act done only to save himself, he GENUINELY cared about Neil and his other friends and wanted justice for all of them.

Throughout the whole movie, Cameron is clearly just trying to be accepted. He gets good grades and studies and does whatever his teachers and textbooks say because he wants the authority figures in his life to pay attention to him and to like him (which actually says a lot about his home life, but that's getting too into headcanon-y territory so I'll save that for another post). And even after his protests, he still goes along with whatever his friends want to do because he wants to be a part of the group and to feel included.

It still annoys me that he calls Todd a stiff in that one scene, but later on while they're getting ready for the play Todd messes up Cameron's hair right after he finally got it fixed so I feel like they're even after that lol. Also, the fact that Cameron is seen fixing his hair all the time shows how much he values other people's approval and how he feels like he has to look good and presentable at all times. He's clearly a pretty anxious person. He's more similar to Todd than many people realize, not only with their similar reactions to Neil's death (they both jump to blame someone else for it) but also with their anxious personalities.

Also☝️even if Cameron did "betray" they poets Judas style, I think that just makes his character more interesting because of the drama and angst. Don't even get me started on his dynamic with Charlie and how the two parallel each other in such an interesting way. They are two sides of the same coin, they both just want to be accepted by the people around them.

Neil's suicide isn't about who's fault it is, it's just a dark twist on the whole "carpe diem" message of the movie. Neil is finally able to take his life into his own hands in a very literal sense, and he is finally able to truly defy the control that his parents the school had over the choices he made about his life.

TLDR: everyone always asks for more complex characters but y'all can't even handle Richard Cameron from Dead Poets Society.