Web Assignment 1
The Lord's Of Discipline --- A Book Of Faith
Rings can symbolize many different things. It may symbolize the love between a man and a woman, someone’s mood, or it maybe even four years of a high school education and adventure. But for Will McLean in Pat Conroy’s, The Lord’s of Discipline, his ring means much, much more.
Entering his freshman year at Carolina Military Institution, Will McLean was expecting “different treatment from regular cadets” (147) because he was on a scholarship for the basketball team. But what he soon came to realize was that like everyone else, he was expected to honor the code of “there is no lying, stealing, cheating, or of toleration those who did” (12). He was expected to live up to the order of trust that was set for all cadets who attended the Carolina Military Institution.
Though the code was essential to surviving at the institution, faith was even more of a factor. Those who survived the Institute knew this and lived with faith in each other for their entire stay at the school. The essential key to surviving is to have trust in your classmates that they will be there with you every step of the way, and if someone didn’t have this trust in others, they would soon fail. “To drop out was to betray your fellows….[and] “to shit on his classmates.” It was the first and most basic law of the Corps” (154). After a day of pushups and a two-mile run where if you fell, you were “forced to rise, to run again… and to rejoin their classmates” (154) because if you didn’t, you were kicked out. Will finds out that the Institute “lose[s] twenty percent of the class in the first month” (151), which I believe is primarily because no plebe is used to the work and suffering that they have to go through. Another reason is because they haven’t formed the bonds of faith between each other, and no one is committed to each other to stick with it. Just like in the Judgment of Nations, the men are divided into two categories, those that are faithful to each other, and those that were there for themselves and didn't take care of their classmates. One of the seniors on Hell Night tells them what they need to do for survival, and that is “to band together in a tight, impregnable brotherhood of your own, to protect each other, to care for each other, and to lean on each other from this day forward until the day you graduate” (159). This advice connects to Aristotle's boat image of the two different types of men. Those who were without a rudder were those who were expelled, and those who decided to trust in their classmates are the men who put a rudder on their boat.
Will McLean is a great example of a cadet who puts a rudder on his boat and is able to stay in the institute because of his faith in others. On the second night, nicknamed Hell Night, Will saves and is saved by a classmate who “dropped down in front of me [him]….. and [he] helped the boy stumble into my [his] room where we [they] both collapsed on the floor in the darkness” (169). After a couple of minutes and a weak introduction of names, the worn and completely exhausted boys were called back. But Will wasn’t able to get up, so “Tradd got slowly to his feet and began helping” (169) Will rise, so in this case, both of these boys are acting like a good samaratin. He then tells us that “elements of both our friendship and our survival were mysteriously contained in those…moments, as I put my arm around his shoulder and we leaned against each other” (169). In those moments, Will and Tradd put faith into each other to not give up, and these boys would eventually graduate together as best friends because of the trust and belief they shared on the second night of school. That same night, though he didn’t know it at the time, 400 other men vowed to themselves and each other that no matter what happened, they would not quit because they put faith in each other and faith in the Lord that they were going to get each other through their plebe year. They vowed to their classmates that they were going to love and treat each other like they would want to be treated. These men on their second night where enveloped into a metanoia because of their fundamental change of character in knowledge of responsibility to themselves and each other.
Then there are those who are not able to join the bond of faith between their classmates. They may be filled with excessive hubris, like Will McLean’s roommate who was only at the Institute for the first two days. His name was Harvey Clearwater, and he made sure Will knew that he was part of “The Clearwaters of Memphis” (150), and that he would “be big stuff in a fraternity if I’d [he’d] gone to the University of Tennessee”(150). Just like the rich man, Clearwater lost his faith in others and Hell Night Harvey hid in the dorm so he wouldn’t have to suffer, and for his punishment of “shit[ting] on”(171) his classmates, he was immediately removed from the Institute. Then there were others, who, if “found guilty of an honor violation, were drummed out of the Corps in a dark ceremony of expatriation that had a remorseless medieval splendor about it” (12). If a cadet ever broke that bond of faith between his classmates, he was immediately dishonored and lost their place in the Institute’s community.
The Lord’s of Discipline is a novel which contains a community based on faith and trust. It is a community where if one doesn’t have faith, they are not able to survive within the walls of the Institute. It is an honor to embrace and endure the four years of bonding into manhood that only certain men of faith are able to rise to. I believe that once a cadet graduates from Carolina Military Institution, he is given the ring that not only shows the honor he has received from the school, but also the faith and trust between him and his fellow cadets.
This novel is a good example of faith for me because I also endure similar situations on sport teams I participate on. If I didn’t have faith in my teammates and they didn’t have any faith in me, the team would fail. If there was no trust in the team, then everyone would play for themselves and not the team as a whole. If on my volleyball team, one player decided that he was going to give up on the team and not work hard, then it might hurt the entire team when it came to Nationals at the end of the year. Maybe because of that one ball my teammate didn’t hit the floor to get to during practice, he might not be able to keep another ball in play during an important match. Every day we are faced with decisions that we may not even know we are making. In The Lords of Discipline, those men who graduated their senior year made a decision every day to not give up on their friends and classmates, and because they had faith, they were able to make the right choice every day. That is the type of person I want to be. I want to be willing to suffer for the good of a whole community and to work hard and always make a decision that will benefit me in the end. I want to be a role model to those who are trying to live a faithful life, just like Will McLean was to the Institute and those around him.
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