How long is lords of discipline

Rate this book. The Lords of Discipline Pat Conroy. A novel you will never forget This powerful and breathtaking novel is the story of four cadets who have become bloodbrothers. Together they will encounter the hell of hazing and the rabid, raunchy and dangerously secretive atmosphere of an arrogant and proud military institute.

They will experience the violence. The passion. The rage. The friendship. The loyalty. The betrayal. Together, they will brace themselves for the brutal transition to manhood With all the dramatic brilliance he brought to The Great Santini , Pat Conroy sweeps you into the turbulent world of these four friends -- and draws you deep into the heart of his rebellious hero, Will McLean, an outsider forging his personal code of honor, who falls in love with a whimsical beauty More Details.

Pat Conroy 64 books 2, followers. Born the eldest of seven children in a rigidly disciplined military household, he attended the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina.

He briefly became a schoolteacher which he chronicled in his memoir The Water Is Wide before publishing his first novel, The Boo. Conroy lived on Fripp Island, South Carolina until his death in Search review text. Displaying 1 - 30 of 1, reviews. Always Pouting. I love Pat Conroy and I don't think I could ever do justice when reviewing any of his books.

His writing is always so rich and draws me in with it's vivid imagery and he always somehow manages to convey so much emotion through his writing that I always feel really affected by it even months after reading it.

This book was excellent, the characters were deep and complex and the plot line was really heavy but well constructed. He managed to address issues like perceptions of masculinity and social hierarchy and nepotism so well.

There aren't many authors who can do that so eloquently, tying in real world issues with a fictional world full of characters who are well developed and a plot line that makes me want to keep reading until I get to the end. Some of this book was really rough though especially the scenes with the hazing but I think it's really necessary to have that visceral reaction to the things happening in the story. Every time I have the same problem with Conroy. Every time when I finish reading ''him'' I have this properly deep ache.

I even get angry because I know it will take a long and thorough research to find book s , author s that could replace this Pat Conroy feeling. And I never do find them, I never managed. The major problem is - I always fall in love with his characters. On the other hand, he is so intense and if I were reading only his books and books of this caliber which is again, impossible to find , I would only read four books per year. To give myself a little break from exhaustion.

BUT, luckily I've read enough reviews to know that I'm not alone in this. To add even more spice to this essay: it's a goddamn military book! I think the main reason why so many people relate is because it seems like you alone are experiencing all the things that are written inside. It really is that real.

And scary. The main character is Will McLean, senior in that college, and he is one of the most amazing and best developed male characters I have ever come across in any novel. Will McLean hates the Institute, but he gave a promise to his father that he would graduate.

During four extremely brutal and agonizing years he was psychologically, physically, emotionally and morally humiliated, degraded in every possible way a human can tolerate, or not tolerate, because plebe system during the first year makes you swallow blood and expect nervous breakdown. Final result if you survive is a satisfaction of becoming a Complete Man.

Will is an Irish descendant, an athlete, majoring English only pussies major languages , with brilliant dry sarcastic humor that is his shield against those who torture him. He is introspective and opinionated, but he has unimaginable sense for justice and fairness and he is wise beyond his years.

He is shivering afraid of his demons and yet absolutely not afraid to point and admit them in a place where you have to hide everything.

But, his major qualities are his morality and loyalty. He cares too much about people, and he thinks too much, and goes into such deep and complicated monologues where he tears himself apart that you as a reader push your limits as well, and this is what kills him. In a way he's a full circle person.

This character is growing with each page and you grow with him. I had a serious crush on him. Institute is the nest of hate, racism and cruelty and they have to accomplish their mission of developing the Complete Man without flaws, so it's vitally important to have somebody who will represent comfort, loyalty and security. Will has three best friends: Tadd, who comes from the wealthiest and oldest Charleston family, Pig, the strongest of all the seniors and Mark, Italian descendant.

They are roommates and blood brothers. Off campus Will is less sure of himself, in his romance with peculiar and snobbish Annie Kate Gervais, a native of the beautiful city Charleston. Conroy knows how to put us on paper.

He wrote pages long poem to this Ashley river based city and those parts where he talks about Charleston are probably, if that is possible, the best parts of the book. From the beginning this book was intense but Will is just so powerful and attractive character that you live with him during the reading.

To find in real life, let alone to get yourself mesmerised by somebody 'who' is called - a fictional character. There is so much more to this book than my words could describe. Painful, insightful, heartbreaking, inspiring and stunning. True masterpiece. Author 44 books Instagram Twitter Facebook Amazon Pinterest I understood for the first time why the punishment for Lot's wife was so severe.

Since he's the most liberal and cynical boy in the academy, he's given the task of protecting the new black recruit who's entering the school as a result of desegregation. Their school, Carolina Military Institute, is well known for its "plebe" system and brutal hazing methods of incoming freshmen, culminating in something called "Hell Night.

Unfortunately, hazing and Hell Night aren't the worst thing about the school. There's whispered rumors of a secret society called "The 10," filled with influential and powerful boys, who will stop at nothing to purge the school of anything that they deem damaging to the Carolina Military Institute's honor code. And if Will McLean does his job and protects Tom, he might come under fire, too. This was so good, you guys.

It's brutal and twisted and violent and awful, and has all kinds of dark themes, but it says powerful things about honor and friendship and pride and loyalty and what it means to really do the right thing.

I'm a huge sucker for secret society and boarding school stories, and when you throw revenge, friendship, and plotting into the mix, I'm sold. This book didn't fail to deliver, either. The hazing scenes are so disturbing and the stakes in this book are so, so high.

There's a lot of grief and suffering. This is an excellent story that I would have loved to have read in college, and I think it's got a story in it that a lot of my friends would be interested in reading.

It says a lot of bad words the F-word, the N-word , and has a lot of tough themes running the gamut from torture and assault sexual and physical to teen pregnancy and suicide, but it's such a powerful read that I feel like it's worth the struggle.

The only reason it doesn't get a full five stars from me is because the writing can be a bit clunky and hard to get into, but man, the story is totally worth that bumpy, dumpy ride. An incredibly in-depth novel about life for young men in a military school. Brett C. The story starts when our main protagonist, Will McLean, reports to school after summer furlough for his senior year. The flashback narrative gives insight to the hazing and Fourth Class System endured during Knob Year.

The story intertwines the bond with his classmates, a love affair, basketball, and his dealings with The Ten. I felt Pat Conroy was a master of the English language: his writing, his prose, the flow of the story, and poetry with a pen kept me captivated throughout the whole story. This is Pat Conroy at his finest in my opinion. While I attended The Citadel, I knew many cadets that read this and I didn't want to out of lack of curiosity.

I read it only the summer after graduating and wished I had read it sooner. I enjoyed it from the beginning to the very end. This would be the 3rd unforgettable book I've read by Mr. Conroy in the past year, and to date. I just love reading his work. There is no other way to put it. He just simply writes, in my humble opinion, the most beautiful sentences I have ever read. He has an unflinching capacity to be so brutally honest it often hurts.

But it is the greatest pain one can recieve from a great novel. The amount of passion, pain, and pure adrenaline within the pages of this book will not let the reader put this one down. I promise! One for my six-star shelf, another Conroy gem.

Brian Eshleman. I should have been a tough audience for this one this time. I read it eight years ago, and I don't typically reread. What's more, I'm even more dismissive of most fiction than I was then. This one was a five-star, jaw-dropping experience then in a way that is not typically repeatable, especially with more jaded places in my heart than I had then. Is the irrepressible exception, the affirmation of life as a man, maybe especially a southern man, with all of its pain in all its beauty.

Whatever books I don't get to until Heaven, whatever mysteries I don't get to solve by mastering a set of facts on an issue pressed between two covers, I'll be back to this one.

It's a checkup for the soul. Conroy has created as realistic a portrait of young adult companionship and comradely as I have found, to date, in literature. This long novel has many themes and characters, but the text is really about its narrator, Will McLean, and his years at a military college, known as "the Institute.

The voice of its protagonist, Will, is one of the novel's most enjoyable features. Will is articulate, sarcastic, and funny as hell. He is also inwardly shy, unsure of his place at the Institute, in his own circle of friends and relationships, and a man capable of great decency and gross baseness. In short, Will is a boy learning how to become a man. Like all of us, it is Will's interior life that is the most honest and interesting, and it is his moments of introspection where the novel really achieves greatness.

However, Conroy has interwoven this high literature with one of the best suspense stories I have seen in recent years. I could not stop reading once I hit the last pages. The novel propelled me along to its conclusion. I had to keep reading, even when at times I did not like what was happening in the text. Another profound element in the novel is Conroy's evocation of Charleston SC.

After Will, Charleston is the most developed character in the text, and it is easy to feel and see the city that plays such an important part in the lives of the characters. Every once in a while I found Conroy's prose to be flowery to no real purpose, but it doesn't detract that much from the novel, and at times it was breathtakingly beautiful.

But it was what the reader wanted, and needed, as a conclusion for this intense novel. When I left the world this novel created I missed it characters. I think about them, I find myself revisiting them. In this sense, Conroy has created a triumphant work.

My favorite read of the year! Pat Conroy wrote beautifully. This one is probably my favorite, or at least a close tie with Beach Music. This is the story of a cadet at the Carolina Military Institute in Charleston during the turbulent s. I read that when Conroy first published this book, his alma mater shunned him for thirty years.

Just to prove how great of a writer he was, military stuff would normally not interest me one bit. This book had me hooked! The friendship between the protagonist, Will, and his three roommates is just lovely. Parts of the story are truly painful and raw at times, especially all the awful and monstrous freshman hazing rituals. Those descriptions are not for the faint of heart. After all that, the story is incredibly powerful and moving. To walk in the spire-proud shade of Church Street is to experience the chronicle of a mythology that is particular to this city and this city alone, a trinitarian mythology with equal parts of the sublime, the mysterious, and the grotesque.

They seemed so real. As with most fabulous books, whatever I read next will likely pale in comparison. Bob Mayer. Author books As with all Conroy books there are many plot lines in the story.

So many, that when they made the movie, they left out the main one! Nevertheless, a writer like Conroy can handle that many stories with his superb prose. As a graduate of West Point we always wondered why people went to the Citadel to be abused. I still wonder although it is an ingrained part of society in that part of the country. Conroy was never afraid to take on difficult topics and his frank look at the racism might even be understated. An excellent read. Wow what a long and deep based book on character study.

This was the first book by this author that I have read. I saw parts of the movie along time ago lol. I thought it was a very good book. I am glad I read it. The story moved at a good pace except every once in a while he did get a little flowery with his writing but it was not often or that bad. This whole book for the most part is character driven which is a talent.

I Liked the main character and almost all of the secondary characters. The dialogue was very sharp , crisp and good. This book brought about the same feelings that another book I read eons ago in high school and that was a Seperate Peace. The last quarter of the book went by at a very good clip. I thought the ending was good but thought maybe it could have had a little bit more of a bite to it but I am not certain on that.

I do think the book could have been tighten up a little bit. I thought maybe the scenes with the girlfriend were to many and I also thought the basketball scene was long.

I debated whether it would go on my favorites shelf and I decided it fell a little short. I do not give out 5 stars often and this one earned it. I say go out and give this book a big spin.. Muhammad K. It is during this process that Will comes face to face with a sinister organization, the driving force behind the hazing culture of the institute, which singles out and targets specific individuals they consider outside their notion of "ideal graduates.

While struggling through these bitter experiences, Will also finds the first love of his life. She adds beauty and purpose to his life, counterbalancing the ever-growing struggles at the institute. The casual use of profanity as a means of degrading people shows how Pat Conroy does anything but sugarcoat the realities of the military academy. To some, this extreme use of lewd language may seem morally objectionable. However, I personally believe such details are integral to the books theme.

These expressions of extreme hate and love are very real, and abstracting away from them would dull the stark message of the book.

The plot was slow to develop, but once established, it was impossible for me to put the book down. The use of vivid details forced me to become closely attached to the characters, their struggles and their emotions at every turning point in the story became mine. I believe this book has particular value for the two extremes of the social spectrum.

I would recommend it to those struggling to come to terms with who they are, since this book serves as a support in their isolation by giving accounts of those who have overcome their isolation. This book is also an important lesson for those in position of authority, it would show them the profound effect their actions can have on the lives of those around them. In conclusion, The Lords of Discipline is an insightful read.

It presents a non-fairytale version of the society we are all a part of. We must all deal in some way or another, with the truths this book features, in order to truly value that which we love and hate.

Author 1 book. The Lords of Discipline was extraordinarily accurate and well written. I was a Citadel cadet at the time in which Conroy set his novel. I never knew Conroy. He was one year behind me. By the time he arrived, I had stupidly begun another plebe year at West Point. So, I had two plebe years in a row. That made me in several ways as tough as nails and in other ways it evacuated my soul--for a while. That was the joy of both places underneath a sky of turbulent blackness and red lightning--bonding with total strangers from different backgrounds and regions.

But two grueling plebe years back-to-back made you either a compliant military puppy with bad judgment or a rebel in a slave rebellion with bad judgment. The Citadel began in the early part of the 19th Century as an institute to train young men of South Carolina to preserve the system of the slave-owning class.

I was a Texan, so what was I doing there? In the second semester of my senior year in high school, we all had to talk to the academic advisor, a lady in her sixties with blue hair a sexy style then for those headed for the pasture. She asked me where I planned to go to school. She only knew me as an athlete and was unaware of my fairly good academic record; so she told me that I could never get into those schools. She was right in one way: I should not have gone to either one.

But I did for no good reason really. And glad I did—sort of, I guess, in hindsight, maybe. I was strategizing in the fog of most teenage thinking that if I got into a school like The Citadel first, I might get to make it into West Point via that route. And that worked. Tradd : My, would I dearly love to play a little 'hide the sausage' with that spectacular piece of wop-ass. Dante 'Pig' Pignetti : She She can't hear ya! Will : Hi baby. How'd you like a hot flesh injection with the old pork-sword, huh?

Nine inches of steaming conga up that tight little Sign In. Play trailer Director Franc Roddam. David Keith Robert Prosky G. Top credits Director Franc Roddam. See more at IMDbPro. Trailer The Lords of Discipline. Photos Top cast Edit. Robert Prosky Col. Spradlin Gen. Bentley Durrell as Gen. Bentley Durrell. Barbara Babcock Abigail St. Croix as Abigail St. Mitchell Lichtenstein Tradd St. Croix as Tradd St.

Malcolm Danare Poteete as Poteete. Judge Reinhold Macabbee as Macabbee. Greg Webb Braselton as Braselton. Dean R. Miller Gooch as Gooch as Dean Miller. Ed Bishop Commerce St. Croix as Commerce St. Katharine Levy Teresa as Teresa. Franc Roddam. More like this. Watch options. Storyline Edit. A black student, Pearce, has been accepted, for the first time and Will is asked to keep an eye out for the inevitable racism.

The racists come in the form of The Ten, a secret group of the elite students. They want Pearce to leave on his own free will, but are prepared to torture him to make it 'his free will'. Will is forced to help Pearce and he is prepared to risk his own career to do so.

One hundred years of the finest school turning out the finest young men. One cadet is about to expose the system. Did you know Edit. Trivia Novelist Pat Conroy based "The Ten" on a incident where a group of military cadets at a distinguished naval and military college secretly banded together to form a secret society to corruptly collude with each other to help each other.

Every year, ten more cadets were added, this went on for years. When the society was exposed, the original cadets were now influential people occupying a number of positions of power. Goofs As Will is sneaking out of the campus to go spy on The Ten, a modern streetside mailbox is shown.