thing i noticed among other things about DPS

Keatings' death is foreshadowed by his taking on the title of the deceased Captain from Whitman's elegy for Abraham Lincoln, the subtext of other poetry being read, the cycle of seasons, and themes of the old passing away to accomodate the rise of the new. This makes it all the more jarring when we realize, perhaps a few scenes before the gun is discovered, that Neil, not Keatings, is the character eventually claimed by death.