Brando (5 page)

The situation didn’t improve during my second year. I failed or dropped out of so many classes that by the end of the term I was informed that I had to repeat my sophomore year.

I was one of the bad boys of the school. I always had friends, boys as well as girls, but I was anathema to many of my teachers and the parents of many of my friends, some of whom treated me as if I were poison. Though I didn’t realize it then, I
was beginning to discover one of the realities of life: members of almost every group in human society try hard to convince themselves that they are superior to the other groups, whether they are religions, nations, neighboring tribes in the rain forest or members of rival suburban country clubs who claim that membership in their club proves they have a higher social standing than those in others. The caste system may be more highly developed in countries like India or England, but every tier of society in almost every culture tries to dominate a group it perceives as beneath it. In Libertyville I was in the caste right near the bottom.

   My father’s solution to my difficulties at Libertyville High was to send me to the same school he had once attended, Shattuck Military Academy in Faribault, Minnesota. He thought the discipline would benefit me greatly.

My tenure at Shattuck was probably fated from the beginning to be short. By then I was rebelling against any authority and against conformity in general with every ounce of energy in my body.

THE CAMPUS OF
Shattuck Military Academy was attractive in the way of a sedate English country boarding school. From a distance it almost looked like one, with symmetrical rows of Gothic limestone buildings and a tall, square bell tower cloaked in ivy. The tower overlooked the parade grounds, where I was soon marching two or three times a day. Beyond the buildings were a football field and hiking trails for extended-order drills. Reveille was at six-thirty, when we shined our shoes and put on our uniforms for the first inspection of the day; after calisthenics there was a formation, morning drill and breakfast. Following five or six hours in a classroom, afternoons were devoted to sports.

I was sixteen when I arrived at Shattuck. Since I had to repeat my sophomore year, I was a year behind other cadets my age. Shattuck had been producing soldiers for the United States Army since shortly after the Civil War. From the first day, we were indoctrinated with its traditions and the exploits of alumni who had demonstrated the values that our teachers said they were going to teach us: discipline, order, honor, obedience, courage, loyalty, patriotism.

As it did for many military academies then, the federal government subsidized Shattuck by providing rifles and cannons for us to drill with. Every year several graduates went on to West Point. Our teachers were called “masters,” and their task was to educate and mold us into proper citizens, instilling in us the kind of acquiescence to authority that generals have sought to impose on their troops from the beginning of time. The military mind has one aim, and that is to make soldiers react as mechanically as possible. They want the same predictability in a man as they do in a telephone or a machine gun, and they train their soldiers to act as a unit, not as individuals. That’s the only way you can run an army. It is only through order, submission to discipline and the exorcising of individuality that you make a good soldier. Many people really enjoy it. I witnessed it at Shattuck, and I’ve seen it in a hundred different ways since then. But I hated it. To regiment people—to make them march in step, all in uniform, marching in a unit—was nauseating to me.

I missed my parents, who rarely visited or wrote, but I had a lot of fun at Shattuck along with much anguish and sometimes loneliness. I did my best to tear the school apart and not get caught at it. I wanted to destroy the place. I hated authority and did everything I could to defeat it by resisting it, subverting it, tricking it and outmaneuvering it. I would do anything to avoid being treated like a cipher, which is what they aim for when they put you in a military uniform and demand conformity and discipline.

Not long ago, I ran across a pile of letters that I’d sent home from Shattuck and that my sister Frannie saved. In my first letter a few weeks after I got there, I told my parents: “The school work is terribly hard to start with, plus my not knowing how to concentrate and my rotten foundation in English, French and Algebra makes things awfully tough. I’m learning, though, not fast maybe, but learning about everything. I hope I will be able to carry all my subjects. I’m working hard and I think I can … 
I’m rooming with an awful nice kid from Portland named John Adams (good guy)….” The food served by the Shattuck mess, I observed, was “grand and you can have all you can hold. I have gained ten pounds and now weigh 157 with clothes on and about 150 without. I feel swell except for my back, which I messed up in football. It’s coming along, though, and I’ve found I can get plenty tough if I want to in football. People think you have to be a big bruiser to play football. That’s bunk. All it takes is a little callousing of the constitution.… You don’t have time to blow your nose here. On the run all the time. The seniors are plenty tough on you. Some are swell fellows just having a bit of fun. Others get nasty sometimes. I don’t like that, but I’ve found that it’s best to just let things slide.…” I went to a dance at a local girls’ school, but apparently it was disappointing: “The girls are grand, but all but bored to tears, and all they can offer you is a roaring game of Chinese checkers or sitting in the middle of the front lawn.… Sometimes I get very lonely and wish I could be home, of course. Mother, please write me.
I’ve gone away to school, you know. Address to Shattuck School, Faribault, Minn.”

In other letters saved by my sister, I reported on the ups and downs of my first year: