The Lords of Discipline

by Pat Conroy

They had promised to make a man out of me and they were doing it. They were making a mean and angry man. They had taken an eighteen-year-old boy. They had shaved his head, humiliated him, exhausted him. They had screamed at him for six months, starved him, made him afraid, obedient, humble, made him cry, made him sorry he was born. They castigated him, spat on him, beat him with their fists, waited for him in packs, sweated the youth out of him, ran him until he dropped, made him hate them and was hated in return, made him weep in front of them, lick their shoes, and beg them to let him leave. Through all this they had left me a poisonous gift. They had made me want to belong to the brotherhood. They made me want to be one of them. And at the end of nine months, I would shake their hands during the recognition ceremony. They would call me by my first name and I would call them by their first names. And at that moment, even Fox, the worst of them all, the most cowardly and the most damaged by the system, would approach me and, with the benediction of history and tradition, call me his brother, his friend and comrade. He would call me himself. He would pass the fire and the dark eyes on to me, as I would pass it ruthlessly on to others. That was the way it worked.