new English professor named Mr. Keating arrives to show the men a new way to live, they find exciting ways to break away from society and not to conform to the pressures put on them. These pieces explain that the world is far too great an enemy for one man to duel, and yet many battles will be won, the losses suffered are magnificent. Both works show courageous feats of spiritual strength and daring acts of rebellion, but ultimately, both works show the tragic and inevitable triumph of society and conformity on those who try to stand against the rules.
             In life, battles are fought everyday, in our homes, at our schools, with our work, and the human race is losing to the enormous struggle between individuality and conformity. Conformity, the machine, faint in it's workings, molds humans from birth into robots made for productivity and normalcy. People, wrapped in blue for boys and pink for girls, taught the acceptable from outrageous, programmed not to stand out, wear standard cut graduation robes, fit into tight gray cubicles sent to live ordinary lives. The machine, a very powerful thing, controls everyday life. In One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, it was known as the Combine, Chief Bromden's hallucination of an actual machine controlling inmates with magnets in the floor. The head of the ward, Big Nurse, moves the inmates like puppets with wires and operates on patients to reduce the risk of outbursts of insanity. Bromden describes it as, "a sure power that extends in all directions on hair-like wires too small for anybody's eye but mine" (20). He can see the influence of Big Nurse over the ward and the power of the combine. The oppressive force of the insane ward is very much like the strict influence of the high school in The Dead Poet's Society. In this movie, the students realize the severity of discipline and tradition in the preparatory school according to the principal. Corporal punishment ...