Professor Ellis Fowler (Donald Pleasance) has been teaching for more than 50 years, and it’s just come to his attention, in a roundabout sort of way, that he’s not welcome to teach any longer. His first thought is that perhaps he should end it all, and he pulls a gun out of his desk drawer to do just that.
But before he does, he hears the class bells ringing, so he heads up to the classroom to see what that’s all about, and there he meets the ghosts of a number of his students. There they regale him with tales of their bravery and courage, tell him how the poetry that he taught served them well, how he led them to save the lives of other and to live extraordinary lives that otherwise wouldn’t have been lived. Makes you wonder if Dead Poets Society could have been made without this episode.
