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Leighton Russell

Mathew Wilson

Writing 2

April 26, 2017

Initiation

The initiation of boys to men is a social phenomenon that has worked its way into playing

an irreplaceable role in most cultures around the world throughout all of human history. While

the rite of passage is encountered in many genres, none can completely encapsulate its

significance and relevance, and so each author in his respective genre highlights one face of the

many faceted topic. Ultimately, every piece of writing is driven by a central purpose or argument

though the medium of its genre and respective conventions; however, the true aptitude of the

author is revealed in his manipulations of the conventions to achieve his purpose. Through the

genre of poetry, Kipling manipulates the conventions of personification, provocative language

and free speech to call boys into manhood and greatness, while in Dead Poets Society,

specialized vocabulary, historical quotes and appealing to certain emotions are used to charge

boys to search for life and meaning through the genre of a rite of passage film.

In the poem If Kipling capitalizes on the poetic conventions of free speech and

repetition, merging them to highlight his purpose of calling a boy sitting at the cusp on manhood

to step into greatness. While this would represent a major taboo in prose, Kipling optimizes his

genre by composing his thirty-two-line piece of work out of a string of conditional statements

that finally resolve in the last line of the poem, Yours is the Earth and everything thats in it,

And -which is more- youll be a Man, my Son! (Kipling 31-32). The entire structure of the

poem, including the repetition of the word If which maintains dissonance until the end, drives
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all the emphasis onto this last line, because this is where Kipling most tangibly displays his

argument and purpose.

The convention of personification which is common throughout poetry, is cleverly used

by Kipling in a way that reveals the audience of his work: boys determined to flight for

manhood. Kiplings most clear use of personification comes from the lines, If you can meet

with Triumph and Disaster and treat these two imposters just the same where he likens the battle

of morality to a physical battle in war (Kipling 11-12). This assimilation reveals the audience as

boys who are determined and eager to fight for their manhood. Brilliantly, in the addressing of

the audience, Kipling does not neglect his purpose but adds to it, further exploring the intensity

and greatness of manhood.

Kiplings provocative language plays a huge role in both speaking to his audience, and

maintaining his central purpose of calling boys into manhood. He uses many charges like If you

can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too and If

you can dream and not make dreams your master; if you can think and not make thoughts your

aim (Kipling 3-4, 9-10). This provocative language is so intentionally aimed toward his

audience of boys that every one of them reading this will ask himself, Can I trust myself like

that? Can I dream like that? Do I have what it takes? And when he has asked these questions, he

will try out his strength, and step into greatness and thus Kipling has succeeded in his purpose of

calling boys into manhood.

On the other hand, the argument of the movie, Dead Poets Society, is that the transition of

boyhood to manhood coexists with the search of meaning and life and this is most clearly

portrayed in the use of specialized vocabulary. Mr. Keating, the mentor figure in this piece,
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repetitively uses the Latin term Carpe Diem which translates to seize the day. This fits very

well into the purpose, that every little point of life has meaning and must be capitalized.

Also, an aspect of this vocabulary use demonstrates the identity of the intended audience

when Keating says, Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary!

(Weir). Clearly, the direct address reveals the audience to be young boys, but also the use of a

catchphrase works intricately for an audience that might have a limited attention span, a

weakness common in young boys that is nonetheless being catered to through the use of

specialized vocabulary.

Another rite of passage movie convention used in Dead Poets Society is historical

allusions and quoting old writers because so much of the search for meaning is based on tradition

and legacy. Keating, by quoting Henry David Thoreau charges his students to live

deliberatelylive deep and suck out all the marrow of lifeput to rout all that was not life

(Weir). Here the movie writers optimize their chosen genre and its conventions to deliberately

show what it means to live a life of meaning through the glorified lens of legacy.

While neither genre is innately more suited to address initiation, each adequately does so

by appropriately manipulating their respective conventions. Kipling uses personification,

provocative language and free speech to call boys into manhood and greatness, while the writers

of Dead Poets Society use specialized vocabulary and historical quotes to charge boys to search

for life and meaning. Each convention when optimized by the author, brilliantly portrays a

different facet of the topic of initiation. Like a ship sailing through the waters of a genre and

being tossed by the waves of its conventions, any author like an apt sailor can ride the waves and

harness the wind by manipulating genre conventions to attain his destination and fulfill his

rhetorical purpose.
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Works Cited

Kipling, Rudyard. If-. A Choice of Kiplings Verse: 1943. (Print)

Weir, Peter, director. Dead Poet's Society. Perferformance by Robbin Williams. Universal

Studios, 1989. DVD.