Saturday, January 24, 2009
Theology of the Great Santini
Theology of the Great Santini
Lest you think I am plagiarizing Pat Conroy’s book, The Great Santini, I assure I am not. I am simply using the title of his novel as a metaphor for a number of different things. It might be that you boomers you never read the book but you surely saw the movie, and you pomos out there have probably read and seen neither- but I won’t hold that against you.
Who was The Great Santini? According to author Pat Conroy, The Great Santini was his Marine Fighter Pilot father who had served in Korea and now(at the 1967) was preparing to serve a tour in Vietnam, and who constantly had to move his family all over the eastern seaboard as he reported to new posts. I’m sure you can imagine how his family of seven children reacted when the Colonel came home and announced; “Pack up, were moving again. We’ll be on the road at midnight to make good time.”
The Colonel, usually in full dress, was competitive in everything, everything but academics and he wanted to make his boys in his own image and his way of doing that was to beat them, throw things at them, verbally and physically abuse them, and to tear their hearts out. When he beat his wife, Pat as a boy would jump on the Colonel’s back only to be swatted off like a persistent fly. Names like pussy, mama’s boy, weak, sad, you’re shit, you’re worth nothing, etc, were the words the of encouragement Patrick Conroy received from the Colonel when ever he tried something that required feats of strength or agility, like sports. He had to answer his father, “Yes, sir. No, Sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
For those of you who vaguely recall either the book or the movie, I need not go on describing the character of The Great Santini. I propose to you, ‘what did you feel when you read the book, saw the movie, or read my brief description above? Think about it for minute.
As it applied to me, years before I got married, I thanked God my dad was not The Great Santini even though his style might have been similar. I got my brain addled and my butt kicked a few times but I usually deserved it, and for the most part it was no where near a real Santini experience. On my part, I was every bit of the Great Santini to my younger brother who still shows the scars for it. Now married for eighteen years with children growing up in my household I ask; “Was I the great Santini? Or to what level was I the great Santini?” Unfortunately there were those times when I put on the colonel’s uniform and became The Great Santini to my children. There were times when I cuffed them, insulted them, verbally abused them, and times when I ground down their self-esteem with the heel of my jungle boot into the sand. Fortunately most of my The Great Santini days are over as I have learned to become someone else, but those days leave their scars behind with which I will have to deal with the rest of my life. A little bit of The Great Santini lives in all of us, no?
Pat Conroy was point guard on the Citadel Bulldog’s Basketball Team and averaged 25 points per game in his senior year. His coach was another The Great Santini type who destroyed his team through petty jealousies and his own insecurities, knowing that he himself would never be the famous college basket player he once was- therefore he went about ruining the potential professional careers of the Citadel’s Bulldogs Basketball Team players. Conroy majored in English and was also the President of the Honor Court, the editor of the school paper, and a major writer for the poetry club. His story of hazing during his plebe was just as full of a nightmare as living in the same house with the colonel- just a lot more of them.
We all have our Great Santinis in this life. I have had my share, thankfully most of them short-lived. It was The Great Santoni who dogged my soul and spirit, far across the oceans with betrayal, pettiness, game playing and uncalled for admonishment for close to fifteen years until I had realized I had given him the power to affect me like that. One day I just refused to give him power over me and The Great Santoni’s jabs and strikes withered up drier than a bone. He was done.
Sometime we have The Great Santinis in our lives who abuse us through mind games, through gossip, spreading of rumors, and through physical and verbal violence. Sometimes it’s hard to sort them all out. Life is full of them. Sometimes we’re akin to a pin pall rolling down through the life lines of lives bouncing off various forms of The Great Santini until we either get catapulted back up only to go through them again, or we luckily plunk into the whole on the bottom.
How does one overcome The Great Santinis of this life? How does one like Patrick Conroy overcome a life full of Great Santinis of all kinds stacked on top of each like cordwood? Conroy went on to write six excellent novels (most about his life) which were mostly best-sellers but not without a cost. He is on his third wife now, had dealt with severe lasting bouts of depression, and contemplated suicide a number of times (his brother committed suicide by jumping off a tall building and mental illness runs his generation of the family). He is a scarred man but somewhat fulfilled as well.
I recently saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire and couldn’t fathom how three children from an Indian slum in Mumbai made it through an unending maze of Great Santinis up until young adulthood. Actually, the real Great Santini would have been a blessing compared to the Karma parked on their front matts. How did they make it when no one, literally, was there to help them, only exploit them?
Another movie worth watching, Gran Torino, directed by, and starring Clint Eastwood visits the same storyline except in the form of a Hmong family in Minnesota who wants to keep their son from joining a gang. In this scenario, Clint Eastwood as The Great Santini neighbor next door, ends up comparing his cultural values with those of the Hmong family and finds his own American values out of whack. He changes over the course of a few months to take under his wing Hmong teenager who calls "gook" and "slope" who was forced to try to steal his car by the Hmong gang and Eastwood teaches the boy constructions skills, then only to lose his own life in the process of peacefully saving the young Hmong boy from a joining gang.
Our world is stacked with Great Santinis. So who are we? Are we the Great Santini to our children, our neighbors, our parents? Or are we on the receiving end? Have we gone through Santini’s like cordwood? What price are we paying to get our souls back again? It doesn't seem like the factory will not stop churning them out too soon. The onslaught may be great but some Great Santinis can change.
Pat Conroy wrote The Great Santini as an act of revenge on his father who had severely beaten all members of his family from the time Pat was a youngster to his graduation date at Citadel. The Great Santini read the book, The Great Santini, written by his son Pat and was cut to the quick. Of course some things were disputed, but by and large, he began to change, and he changed radically. Pat Conroy tremendously enjoyed the new relationship he and his father came to build between themselves over the last 15 or so years of The Great Santini’s life.
Change is possible no matter how much the odds are stacked up against us, or against someone else. It won’t be fun, it won’t be easy, you don’t have to like it, and it will be messy, but let’s get on with it as much as we can. And God uses to The Great Santinis of this life to shape us into who and what he wants to be. God’s shaping is never fun easy either, but it is the way he chooses. I don’t know any other way that Pat Conroy could have responded to God’s shaping through his father, coach and plebes in his short 21 years. Would I trade his fame and fortune for those experiences. A tough call!
Lest you think I am plagiarizing Pat Conroy’s book, The Great Santini, I assure I am not. I am simply using the title of his novel as a metaphor for a number of different things. It might be that you boomers you never read the book but you surely saw the movie, and you pomos out there have probably read and seen neither- but I won’t hold that against you.
Who was The Great Santini? According to author Pat Conroy, The Great Santini was his Marine Fighter Pilot father who had served in Korea and now(at the 1967) was preparing to serve a tour in Vietnam, and who constantly had to move his family all over the eastern seaboard as he reported to new posts. I’m sure you can imagine how his family of seven children reacted when the Colonel came home and announced; “Pack up, were moving again. We’ll be on the road at midnight to make good time.”
The Colonel, usually in full dress, was competitive in everything, everything but academics and he wanted to make his boys in his own image and his way of doing that was to beat them, throw things at them, verbally and physically abuse them, and to tear their hearts out. When he beat his wife, Pat as a boy would jump on the Colonel’s back only to be swatted off like a persistent fly. Names like pussy, mama’s boy, weak, sad, you’re shit, you’re worth nothing, etc, were the words the of encouragement Patrick Conroy received from the Colonel when ever he tried something that required feats of strength or agility, like sports. He had to answer his father, “Yes, sir. No, Sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
For those of you who vaguely recall either the book or the movie, I need not go on describing the character of The Great Santini. I propose to you, ‘what did you feel when you read the book, saw the movie, or read my brief description above? Think about it for minute.
As it applied to me, years before I got married, I thanked God my dad was not The Great Santini even though his style might have been similar. I got my brain addled and my butt kicked a few times but I usually deserved it, and for the most part it was no where near a real Santini experience. On my part, I was every bit of the Great Santini to my younger brother who still shows the scars for it. Now married for eighteen years with children growing up in my household I ask; “Was I the great Santini? Or to what level was I the great Santini?” Unfortunately there were those times when I put on the colonel’s uniform and became The Great Santini to my children. There were times when I cuffed them, insulted them, verbally abused them, and times when I ground down their self-esteem with the heel of my jungle boot into the sand. Fortunately most of my The Great Santini days are over as I have learned to become someone else, but those days leave their scars behind with which I will have to deal with the rest of my life. A little bit of The Great Santini lives in all of us, no?
Pat Conroy was point guard on the Citadel Bulldog’s Basketball Team and averaged 25 points per game in his senior year. His coach was another The Great Santini type who destroyed his team through petty jealousies and his own insecurities, knowing that he himself would never be the famous college basket player he once was- therefore he went about ruining the potential professional careers of the Citadel’s Bulldogs Basketball Team players. Conroy majored in English and was also the President of the Honor Court, the editor of the school paper, and a major writer for the poetry club. His story of hazing during his plebe was just as full of a nightmare as living in the same house with the colonel- just a lot more of them.
We all have our Great Santinis in this life. I have had my share, thankfully most of them short-lived. It was The Great Santoni who dogged my soul and spirit, far across the oceans with betrayal, pettiness, game playing and uncalled for admonishment for close to fifteen years until I had realized I had given him the power to affect me like that. One day I just refused to give him power over me and The Great Santoni’s jabs and strikes withered up drier than a bone. He was done.
Sometime we have The Great Santinis in our lives who abuse us through mind games, through gossip, spreading of rumors, and through physical and verbal violence. Sometimes it’s hard to sort them all out. Life is full of them. Sometimes we’re akin to a pin pall rolling down through the life lines of lives bouncing off various forms of The Great Santini until we either get catapulted back up only to go through them again, or we luckily plunk into the whole on the bottom.
How does one overcome The Great Santinis of this life? How does one like Patrick Conroy overcome a life full of Great Santinis of all kinds stacked on top of each like cordwood? Conroy went on to write six excellent novels (most about his life) which were mostly best-sellers but not without a cost. He is on his third wife now, had dealt with severe lasting bouts of depression, and contemplated suicide a number of times (his brother committed suicide by jumping off a tall building and mental illness runs his generation of the family). He is a scarred man but somewhat fulfilled as well.
I recently saw the movie Slumdog Millionaire and couldn’t fathom how three children from an Indian slum in Mumbai made it through an unending maze of Great Santinis up until young adulthood. Actually, the real Great Santini would have been a blessing compared to the Karma parked on their front matts. How did they make it when no one, literally, was there to help them, only exploit them?
Another movie worth watching, Gran Torino, directed by, and starring Clint Eastwood visits the same storyline except in the form of a Hmong family in Minnesota who wants to keep their son from joining a gang. In this scenario, Clint Eastwood as The Great Santini neighbor next door, ends up comparing his cultural values with those of the Hmong family and finds his own American values out of whack. He changes over the course of a few months to take under his wing Hmong teenager who calls "gook" and "slope" who was forced to try to steal his car by the Hmong gang and Eastwood teaches the boy constructions skills, then only to lose his own life in the process of peacefully saving the young Hmong boy from a joining gang.
Our world is stacked with Great Santinis. So who are we? Are we the Great Santini to our children, our neighbors, our parents? Or are we on the receiving end? Have we gone through Santini’s like cordwood? What price are we paying to get our souls back again? It doesn't seem like the factory will not stop churning them out too soon. The onslaught may be great but some Great Santinis can change.
Pat Conroy wrote The Great Santini as an act of revenge on his father who had severely beaten all members of his family from the time Pat was a youngster to his graduation date at Citadel. The Great Santini read the book, The Great Santini, written by his son Pat and was cut to the quick. Of course some things were disputed, but by and large, he began to change, and he changed radically. Pat Conroy tremendously enjoyed the new relationship he and his father came to build between themselves over the last 15 or so years of The Great Santini’s life.
Change is possible no matter how much the odds are stacked up against us, or against someone else. It won’t be fun, it won’t be easy, you don’t have to like it, and it will be messy, but let’s get on with it as much as we can. And God uses to The Great Santinis of this life to shape us into who and what he wants to be. God’s shaping is never fun easy either, but it is the way he chooses. I don’t know any other way that Pat Conroy could have responded to God’s shaping through his father, coach and plebes in his short 21 years. Would I trade his fame and fortune for those experiences. A tough call!
