First sentence: “I wear the ring.” 

Though McLean shares a connection to the dark poets and mistreated Indians of the city, he remains passionate about it being the “most beautiful city in America”—a city with “equal parts of the sublime, the mysterious, and the grotesque” (3). McLean warns of the “refined cruelty” of Charleston, addressing the reader directly. The city is further described as aristocratic in its restraint, complementing the Institute as not being able to exist as it is in any other city but Charleston. 

After the page break on page 3, Will McLean succinctly describes the volatile, military history of his father and their alienated relationship—it was through the 14-year-old’s promise that Will attended the Carolina Military Institute on his father’s death bed. His mother is a strong woman with a demure Southern exterior—she is the true iron fist of the family. 

The introduction ends on page 6 with a conflicted memory of the Institute as a source of love, hate; strength, weakness; pride and shame: “You see, I still wear the ring.” 

Chapter one, entitled “The Cadre”, is a flashback to Will McLean’s senior year at the Institute in 1966. There is a marked tone shift towards innocence as Will feels pride at the responsibility of training the incoming cadets, an honor for the highest-ranking cadet officers. During a morning drive, Will ruminates on the surprise of this high post since he has not been an exemplary military figure in the past four years. 

Finally pulling up to the Institute, Will exchanges sarcastic banter with Cain, a muscular varsity football player. This is the first dialogue of the novel on page 11.  

After four years at the Institute, Will is finally inured to the beauty of linear, unimaginative campus. It smells like freshly cut grass, as it does for most of the year. He ruminates on the history of military schools in the South, and this campus is no different: “The Institute, romantic and bizarre, was the city of Charleston’s shrine to Southern masculinity” (13).  

The middle of page 13 rings out with “Halt, Bubba.” Colonel Berrineau (Bear), appears behind Will, good-humoredly asking him about his communistic summer adventures. They converse in familiar sarcasm, with quips about their suspected homosexuality. They both seem genuinely happy to see each other after the summer vacation. 

Chapter two begins on page 15 and the meditation on the city of Charleston is uninterrupted until 19—the city is clearly the main character at this point. 

Will arrives at his roommate Tradd’s house in the aristocratic, South of Broad Street, side of town. The house is opulent and considered one of the 5 most beautiful in the city. Will is greeted by Tradd’s mother, Abigail St. Croix, an “awkwardly constructed woman” obviously more than comfortable with her wealth. Her husband is ironically named Commerce.  

Abigail shows Will the garden, rattling off the gossip of the past summer—mastectomies, marriages, deaths—while Tradd can be heard playing Mozart from inside. In what is becoming Will’s particular brand of burning sarcasm, he wonders what it would take to be a Southern aristocrat: “I should become a hopeless alcoholic, chain a maiden aunt in an attic, engage in deviant sexual behavior with polo ponies, and talk like I was part British and part Negro” (20). While Abigail gushes about her roses, Will counters with his love for basketball—she makes no effort to hide her disappointment.  She conspiratorially questions Will about Tradd’s sexuality, but Will comforts her by saying all English majors are thought of as “queer as three-dollar bills” (22). This pressure is because Tradd is the last of the St. Croixs.  

Will visits Commerce in the house, who is resolutely watching TV—he is also an “Institute man,” still in active duty. The two men exchange off-color jokes until Tradd arrives. He presents Will with a worn fountain pen he bought for him in London. Commerce seems to prefer Will over his son—“one of the guys” instead a little girl playing with dolls like Tradd (26). This battle over his son’s masculinity is apparently an ongoing one. Like Will, Tradd is attending the Institute for his father. 

Commerce asks Will to follow him upstairs on page 29 for a private conversation, where the older man places the Institute ring back on his finger—he hasn’t worn it since a man named Durrell was made president. Commerce asks Will to apologize for him, and that he hadn’t meant to offend his son: “It just slipped out” (30). Will agrees to do so. 

The chapter ends with Will remembering his first few visits to the St. Croix mansion and how Abigail had pressed a key to the house into his hand, telling him he always had a home in Charleston.  

Chapter three is set in Henry’s Restaurant at noon the next day. Will meets Colonel Berrineau, where they discuss the Institutes first black cadet, Pearce. In order to keep Federal funds, the responsibility for keeping Pearce in school is placed on Will, “That means we’ve got to keep these Carolina white boys off his tail as much as we can” (33). Bear admits to being a racist, as well as 99% of the Corps, but it’s imperative that Pearce graduate the Institute. 

Chapter four is the same evening, set in Will’s room where he polishes his inspection shoes and waits for his two other roommates to arrive. Mark Santoro arrives and the two exchange sarcastic banter about Santoro’s greasy Italian heritage and Will’s “Irish pig” nose. Will tells Mark that Commerce is having the boys over for dinner, and he volunteers to wait for Pig, their fourth roommate alone.  

Dante “Pig” Pignetti was much admired for his perfectly muscled physique, even inspiring awe and fear in his upper classmen when still a freshman. Will had befriended him out of calculation for a strong ally. Pig finally arrives in a flurry of violence: Gooch had insulted his girl and was going to have to pay for it. After kicking Gooch around on the floor for a while, Pig makes Gooch apologize to his photograph of Theresa. Will instructs Pig to get dressed for dinner at the St. Croix mansion. 

Chapter five begins on page 42 with Will in his full-dress uniform, preparing for a meeting with General Durrell, a highly decorated and esteemed egomaniac. Durrell was a graduate of the Institute himself, and grew to be a quintessential authority figure. After an intimidating quiz on Will’s definition of honor, which he admits he doesn’t completely understand, the General ushers in two cadets.  

John Alexander and Wayne Braselton disagree with Will’s position in the cadre and they both volunteer to take his place instead. Alexander notes Will’s slovenly dress and disregard for the Institutes traditions, which Will counters with representing the will of the Corps by his election. Alexander and Braselton are dismissed. The Colonel says he admires Will’s competitive spirit and allows him to keep his post in the cadre on page 51. 

At 498 pages, The Lords of Discipline seems to be an expansive meditation on Will McLean’s experiences as a cadet in the Carolina Military Institute in Charleston, South Carolina. Pat Conroy goes to great lengths to describe the military exactness of the Institute as well as the unique peculiarities of the city of Charleston, a location that the narrator can’t get out of his blood. The descriptions of these Southern characters as well as Charleston itself, while beautiful in their unique, contradictory descriptions, tend to be a bit superfluous, even self-indulgent. My hunch is that if this novel were a debut by Conroy, he would have a very difficult time pitching it—the length and extensive description without plot development are indulgences afforded to bestsellers, not newbies.