If I were Neil

Suicide was very extreme. However, when you're in that sort of emotional crisis that he was in, you aren't thinking clearly. You can't see/find a way out. He was cut off from everyone and thing he cared about and had no way to recenter himself.

Part of what is sad is his father thought he was doing the best thing he could for his son, by removing the distractions and "bad influences". Neither one of them could really talk to the other.

You can't be in Neil's shoe since you never knew what it feels like to be flowing with passion. The numerous scenes where Neil is exulted from the fulfillment of knowing for himself by thinking for himself against anyone, even if it was a stubborn man like his father, that Acting was not just a whim.

After being humiliated after his performance, his father attempted to suppress his acting business by pulling him out. It was big blow on Neil's self-esteem, you could see it in the character. The actor did an amazing job.

Then being cornered at your very home.
Which is what exactly parents try to do to manipulate their kids. They show great power like him pulling Neil out of the play and ignoring all. The kid will only feel small and cornered. As Neil even said that he felt trapped.

If my parents had the power to support me and take care of me, and if I had not taken Keatings class, agreed that I would not have the mind to think against others. And I would have gone to medical school.

But have experienced Keatings class, I learned to think on my own and not conform. These things are worth dying for.

It was 1959. The mainstream western world was highly conformist. The counterculture was barely even a "thing" yet, at least in the popular perception, and it would have been relatively easy for the establishment of the day to pound into kids' heads the message that rigid conformity was the only thing standing between a good, productive, "respectable" life on the one hand, and dying poor, alone and drug-addicted on the other. Hell, even rock n' roll music looked to be dying a slow death, with Elvis in the army, Buddy Holly and Richie Valens dead, Little Richard a preacher, etc.

The movie had to be set when it was; if it hadn't been, you're probably right. Neil's suicide wouldn't have made much sense. By the mid-sixties, the establishment was still portraying the counterculture as a one-way ticket to Hell/the grave/whatever, but with so many young people embracing it, the messages didn't have nearly the same resonance anymore. By that point in history, Neil could have seen options other than (a) suicide and (b) obeying his father.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.
-- Klingon proverb

If Neil could easily access his father's gun he could have easily accessed his father's stash of cash. If I were Neil I would have snuck out of the house and made my way to either Canada or North Maine and work as a logger or farm aide for cash until I was 18 then made my way to Hollywood. The fallout at Welton would have been the same.

"The end of the shoelace is called the...IT DOESN'T MATTER!"

If you were Neil, Neil wouldn't be what we think of as 'Neil', wide eyed in the anything might happen 1950s with a father born in maybe Edwardian times, as he'd be inhabited by someone living in 2016 rather than 60 years before.

Neil knew he could never stand up to his father, and that is what bothered him most...not that he couldn't be an actor.

But yes...he could have done a million other things...

His father wanted him to go to med school. And Neil had to survive premed plus medschool. By then he would be 30. He had to endure his father's tyranny until then. And the father would never have let go. I know this because my parents are like that, too.

'Ne cherchez plus mon coeur, les bêtes l'ont mangé.' Baudelaire

Neil's personality would not have suited military school which I think is what ultimately made him commit suicide.

That said, I think Neil should have just played along till 18 or if he really wanted to, just run away if he wanted to be extreme about it all. But I don't think Neil would have been able to fend for himself in the big bad world.

Overall he should have played along with his father, dropped the acting, turned 18, told his dad to fuck off and did what he wanted to. His father was a dick though and should have allowed Neil to act as a hobby which is probably how Neil should have presented it to his father rather than a career move.