The Great Santini Paperback – 1 Mar 2002

A really lovable book. As for the Great Santini himself, you learn to hate him but you end up loving him.

Pat Conroy's novel The Great Santini tells of the coming of age of Ben Meechan. Ben, the oldest son of Bull and Lillian Meechan, is a clean cut, smart athlete. Bull, the Great Santini, is a macho marine fighter pilot who is trying to relive his youth through his son Ben. Lillian is a naive southern belle who is very passionate toward her children. Ben is scared of his father and he tries to protect the rest of his family from him. Ben moves to Ravenel, South Carolina during his junior year of high school. He makes a few friends and becomes the star basketball player. This causes a conflict with his father who is never satisfied with his son's achievements. Bull is called to go on a routine flying mission to Florida. His plane crashes and Bull is killed. At the conclusion of the novel, Ben assumes the family responsibilities formerly held by Bull. The theme in this book is that people show their love in different ways. Bull constantly nags the children and is overly intense because he is always trying to make them better. Lillian babies the children and wants the boys to be southern gentleman because she does not want them to be like Bull. Ben and his sister, Mary Anne, argue constantly as many siblings do. After their father's death, they show their love for each other by coming together as a family. Mr. Dacus, Ben's principal and basketball coach, is aware of Ben's situation at home. He becomes protective of Ben and later has to tell Ben about his father's death. The main strength in this book is the great amount of detail. An example of this is,"...sleeping as the car rolled through vast wilderness and untransmissible lights." The characterization was also a strength. It is obvious that Bull is very stern when the author says, "His voice could quiet a bar full of drunks during a fight." Sammy, Ben's best friend, showed his insecurity by usually telling his dates a false name. There were so many strengths in this book that any weaknesses would go unnoticed. The novel The Great Santini, by Pat Conroy, depicts the adolescent life of Ben Meechan as though the reader were part of the story. It is easy to understand the life that a Marine family must endure; the constant moving, having to always make new friends and the fear of your father never returning from a mission. Ben's emotions could be felt in the excitement on the court and the fear of his father. Ben's internal conflict is accurately depicted in the manner in which he deals with his father's death. Conroy is able to write this story so well because it is based on a part of his life. He actually moved to Beaufort (Ravenel), South Carolina during his junior year of high school. He was very upset at having to move one more time. His mother, whom he loved dearly, told him, "Go out and make this town your town." Conroy has lived and traveled all over the world, but he still calls Beaufort home. Conroy was the star basketball player for his high school and attended The Citadel on a basketball scholarship. His father would never let him take a typing class because he thought that typing classes were only for girls. Conroy says that this has proven to be the most expensive thing his father has ever done to him. To this day he still cannot type. He writes his manuscripts in longhand and must pay to have them typed.

Nobody has wrung more novels from a dysfunctional family than Pat Conroy. In The Great Santinti he opens a window which may give a new and unexpected view to many Americans, into the family life of a career military man. For those who have never lived within the military, this book may seem bizarre and contrived. For those of us who did, it hits a nerve - even for those of us whose father was not an abusive borderline alcoholic fighter pilot. The sense of rootlessness, of being disconnected from the rest of society is here. Military families live in a strange semisubmerged culture invisible to the mainstream, and with the ending of the draft we have a generation of Americans who have never served and thus the gap has widened. The only friendships we form are with other military people, for civilians, even in the towns outside the main gate, are partially alien and can never be part of the community. Conroy captures this, and superimposes upon it the additional strains imposed by the father's domineering, macho, iron willed personality. Face it, he's not Gerald McRaney from Major Dad. No trying to understand the fears and dreams of his family, we do it by the book, my way or no way, sir, yes sir!!! There is stress between Colonel Santini and his neurotic southern belle wife, who wants to ensure her children grow up with a gentle appreciation for life, with his son who wants desperately to please his father but to do it by following his own path, and with his intelligent but socially awkward daughter who being a mere girl is not qualified for the warrior life and thus doesn't count. The military life is hard enough, throwing in these problems on top of it makes you wonder at the limits we accept in everyday life. Hard edged, disorienting, sometimes ugly, this book is for all veterans of the Cold War, active duty or dependents, who lived with the possibility that the head of the family might be called upon to go off and die in someplace most of us couldn't locate on a globe (as an aside I find that former military brats are much better at geography than most others - for one thing we got letters from all those exotic locales)... Admiral Hyman Rickover once said military officers should be like a caste of warrior priests... this novel is about that caste and the acolytes who also served. Pat Conroy once wrote elsewhere to the effect that his father's job was to be a fighter pilot, and his family's job was to provide that fighter pilot whenever the govenrment called for him.