Was Neil gay?

Neil did nothing in the film that would suggest he was gay, so I'll have to no he wasn't gay. ----- The one thing about the film that annoyed me, when Neil's father tells him to forget about acting in the play. Neil tells him his grades are straight "A"s. ----- If I had a son who keeps his grades up, I wouldn't mind what other interests he got into. ----- Rusty

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No, I don't think he was,there was nothing to suggest it. In the current day people (I don't mean the OP, specificaly) see this as the overriding issue for many. I don't think that was the point here.

It was as Keating told him "carpe diem." For Neil, carpe diem was acting. For the other boy it was Chris. They could have had Chris reject the boy and would be the one who killed himself. Same point.

I half expected it to go there, and wouldn't have been surprised. They could have had Neil's father proud of the accomplishment too, but they were going with the "revolutionary" theme.

I don't see how he was gay. He was interested in girls, I'm sure. The reason he committed suicide was that his father was going to take him out of Welton and put him in a military school so he could go to Harvard and be a doctor. Neil was unable to stand up to his dad and tell him that he wanted to act and felt that after his father told him to forget that, decided it was hopeless to fight him and felt this was the only way to defy his dad. Why is this so hard to comprehend? Jesus Christ.

It wasn't addressed, but I believe his father feared it was so. His face when he was watching the play said it all, and how he yelled at Keating to stay away from his son. I think he thought that Keating's influence over his son would eventually allow him to express all of his emotions and he was very scared of that.

Just a feeling. It wasn't overt, by any means.

I think before taking this into serious consideration one must be aware of the OP:

I didn't connect with the movie, finding it endlessly tedious. Then out of nowhere, one of the boys commits suicide.

The suicide was so out of nowhere that I was laughing at the contrivance. But was there a reason for it?

He could have been, but there's nothing concrete enough to prove it one way or another, so we'll never know. He reacted pretty favourably to that female centrefold, but then some people will say he was just putting on an act to fit in. I see no reason to ascribe him as gay, going on current statistics the odds are more likely that he wasn't. There are plenty of other movies for young (or old) gay people struggling in the closet to relate to where it's not a guessing game. The only way to finalise your argument would be to go directly to the writers and producers for an answer.

In response to some of your questions, I believe he stripped down in order to symbolise the freedom he was about to grant himself with the gun, notice how he folded his pyjamas and school uniform the same way, and all in neat right angles? That was symbolic of leaving his strict, rigid, set-out life behind and going out into the wild unknown, unencumbered by rules or the material trappings of the iron will of his father.

Not to mention it's a common behaviour of people who commit suicide to 'get their affairs in order', things like cleaning their house, packing up all their stuff, even getting a haircut. Neatening everything out so that they can go knowing they tied up all the loose ends of their life, and the people who find them will have less to sort out.

You can view it as an allegory for being gay, others will view it as allegories for other things, like anorexia or drug addiction or wanting freedom from an oppressive religious upbringing, it works just as well for many aspects of the human condition.

I don't think viewing his love of playing a 'camp fantasy creature' like Puck as evidence of him being gay is very healthy, it's stereotyping. Would you think that if his role had happened to be a more 'masculine' Shakespeare role like Claudius or Tybalt? He tried out for Puck because he wanted the biggest role he could get, and A Midsummer Night's Dream was the play they happened to be putting on when he tried out.

One could easily use your theories to apply to the other boys, not just Neil. Todd displays a lot of behaviour that could be put down to his being gay. His shyness, his awkwardness around other boys, his unwillingness to speak publicly or reveal his inner self through poetry, his sobbing breakdown after he found out Neil was dead.
Charlie's keen interest in girls and campaign to get girls attending the school could be construed as an energetic ruse to disguise his true sexuality, his acting out could be construed as frustration at having to live a lie, and then there's that horribly homoerotic spanking scene with the headmaster.
Even the 'cat sat on the mat' boy could be labelled gay in a traditional 'dumb jock is secretly gay' way a la Glee. You can always find reasons to label a person gay, doesn't mean they are, and in the lack of substantial evidence, as I said, statistics strongly suggest that the more likely assumption is to assume that they are not.


The mirror... it's broken.
Yes, I know. I like it that way. Makes me look the way I feel.