The Lords of Discipline

Mark, Pig, and the somewhat reluctant Will quickly track down Dan Molligen and decide to use him to get more information about The Ten. Mark and Pig break into his house and knock him out using chloroform. The three cadets then transport the bound and gagged Molligen to a remote area, tie him to an unused set of train tracks, and convince him that he will be killed by a train (which is in fact passing on a different, nearby track) if he doesn’t provide information about The Ten. Molligen admits that The Ten exists and that it uses the General’s plantation house for torture sessions.

When Will later learns (thanks to Pearce’s roommate) that Pearce has been taken from the campus under mysterious circumstances, he sets out alone for the General’s estate. He cautiously makes his way to the plantation house, where he discovers members of The Ten and sees them torturing Pearce, who is tied to a chair and is being forced to endure electric shocks to his genitals. Will recognizes his classmates Cain Gilbreath and John Alexander among The Ten. Breaking from his original plan, he alerts them to his presence and runs off. Gilbreath and a few other members of The Ten chase Will along the beach near the General’s house, but are quickly overpowered by Mark and Pig, who have followed along unknown to Will himself.

In the aftermath of the fight on the beach, Will approaches Gilbreath, who warns him that the situation could get worse for Will and his roommates. Pearce, for his part, has agreed to pretend that the incident at the house never happened, robbing Will of a possible ally. When consulted, Mark and Pig state that they are willing to stand up to The Ten; Will and Tradd, though, want the situation to blow over.

When The Ten do not resurface, Will and his roommates settle into a relaxed routine; they look forward to graduation and to Pig’s marriage to Theresa, which is also scheduled for the end of the academic year. One night, Will is working on a paper—a response to The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James—when commotion breaks out. Pig has just been discovered siphoning gasoline from another student’s car. This theft constitutes an honor violation and will lead to Pig’s expulsion from the Institute. The car in question, it turns out, was Will’s own.

Pig is brought before the Institute’s honor court, with Will, Mark, and Tradd making up the members of his defense team. While the student prosecuting Pig, Jim Rowland, sees Pig’s case as a straightforward instance of theft, Pig’s roommates argue that both their willingness to share their resources with Pig and Pig’s poor background can be used to explain away his actions. The defense is unsuccessful. In short order, the Institute students gather for a ceremony that will exile Pig from their midst and from their memories: Pig walks between rows of assembled students, faces his roommates one last time, and catches a cab that will take him to the local train. In a sudden realization, Will intuits that Pig intends to kill himself, and rushes after. He finds Pig facing down the 11:42 train, but is not in time to save his roommate.

After Pig’s suicide, Will stays in bed for days and primes himself to take on The Ten. Will and Mark are given a series of trumped-up demerits for orderliness and appearance, all with the intention of driving them out of the Institute. But Will and Mark also make a discovery regarding The Ten when Dan Molligen appears at an Institute military parade and is seen talking with Commerce St. Croix. Suspecting that Commerce may have written about The Ten in his journals, Will and Mark head to the St. Croix mansion, enter Commerce’s study, and begin to read the record of Commerce’s life. Will discovers that Commerce and the General were both inducted into The Ten; Mark uncovers sensitive information about Tradd, though Conroy’s narration does not immediately explain precisely what Mark has discovered.

Certain now that The Ten is a fact of Institute life, Will confronts the Bear. The two of them had been on tense terms, since Will had (wrongly) suspected that the Bear could be a member of The Ten himself. Determined to do right by Will, even if it means hurting his own position at the Institute, Colonel Berrineau helps Will form a plan to confront the General and to prevent Will and Mark from being expelled.

On the Monday he is due to be expelled, Will reports to the General’s office and is followed soon after by the Bear, who has removed Will and Mark’s demerits. This maneuver does not make the General less inclined to expel Will and Mark; in fact, the General knows that Will and Mark kidnapped Dan Molligen and claims to be covering for this crime. Will then informs the General that Mark, who is positioned at a postbox nearby, is on the verge of mailing damaging information about the Institute and The Ten to news outlets. The General realizes that Will has prevailed. In their final agreement, the information concerning The Ten will be destroyed and both Will and Mark will graduate.

Soon after this triumphant meeting, Will goes to see the St. Croix family. Commerce is upset, but Abigail and Tradd treat Will in a friendly manner—at least until Will reveals more of his discoveries: as Commerce’s journals have revealed, Tradd is both a member of The Ten himself and the father of Annie Kate’s child. Although Tradd begs for Will’s understanding and renewed friendship, Will leaves the St. Croix mansion, passing by Commerce (who is destroying the journals) and determined that he will never return.

Will takes one last walk around Charleston before he graduates; as he does so, he reads over a letter from Annie Kate, who has settled into a new life in California and thinks kindly of him, even though they will never reunite. Will and Mark—who, unlike Will, will serve heroically in Vietnam and ultimately give his life for his country—receive their diplomas. Will notices that the General’s signature appears on his diploma and asks the Bear to sign the document as well, since he would like to have his diploma bear the name of a man that he can respect. The Bear informs him that the diploma already bears the name of such a man, and points to Will’s own.