In the Cordova Hotel, near the docks of Barcelona, fourteen Marine Corps fighter pilots from the aircraft carrier Forrestal were throwing an obstreperously spirited going away party for Lieutenant Colonel Bull Meecham, the executive officer of their carrier based squadron.
The opening line of the novel situates the basic conception of the novel as one that will be about a military man. The name “Bull” also strongly indicates the character of Col. Meecham, though the identity of this Santini person is not mentioned.
Lt. Col. Bull Meecham, United States Marine Corps, was back from Europe. The father had landed. The Great Santini was home.
The line that brings chapter two to a close finally clears up the lingering mystery. The titular character is Col. Meecham, after all. What makes him the Great Santini remains yet to be discovered. Now that the Colonel is back home with his family and the story is really ready to start, however, perhaps that mystery will not longer much longer.
“Now I want all you hogs to look out the window and see if you can guess which house the Great Santini rented for his family.”
Two very important pieces of information are conveyed in this quote. One, Col. Meecham has a habit of referring himself in the third person, but only as the Great Santini. And, two: he also has a habit of referring to his children of various ages as “hogs.”
“Hey, T-t-t-t-toomer. H-h- how you doing? Wh-wh-where you g-g-going?”
Red is a backwards man with deeply racist tendencies, one whose idea of a great joke is making fun of the stutter problem experienced by a poor black young man named Toomer. This public exhibition of his deficiencies both as humorist and human is his introduction to Ben Meecham, the Colonel’s son, and it marks the beginning of a long march toward fate.
“Mary Anne? Who is that strange creature? I know who sportsfans is. I know who jocko is. I know who hog is. But who is this person, Mary Anne? I do not know such a person.”
The novel is a coming of age story about Ben Meecham, but for many readers the true standout among the children of the Great Santini is his sassy daughter, Ben’s younger sister Mary Anne. She is on the receiving end of much of the Colonel’s harshest treatment, but unlike Ben is rarely ready to back down. She is also quite tired of being treated like a male soldier of low rank.
“You’re my favorite daughter, Ben. I swear to God you’re my sweetest little girl.”
The single most famous sequence in the story—courtesy of the film adaptation—is the first time that Ben beats his dad in a game of one-on-one and then wins an even bigger victory by refusing to give in to the Colonel’s sudden rule change to allow him the opportunity to win. In the most infamous display of Meecham’s repellent characteristics, he follows Ben all the way from the driveway up the stairs to the door of his room bouncing the basketball off the back of his son’s head. And then he delivers what for him is the ultimate insult.
“Yeah, Dad, and this little girl just whipped you good.”
To which his son finally turns around and replies with all the confidence of a battle won beyond any consideration of defeat or surrender.
“He needed a war. He needed it badly.”
Although the novel is a coming-of-age tale about Ben, it is a story that would not be the same if Ben had been born just a little earlier or just a little later. The story takes place in that narrow little corridor of time between the Korean War and the Vietnam War when Marine fighter pilots were warriors without a war. Without a war to fulfill his training and sublimate his psychopathy, Col. Meecham turns his urges for violence, conflict and confrontation toward the only people he can without risking the ruination of the one thing he truly loves: the discipline of the Marine Corps. There is irony in this musing of the Colonel inside the cockpit as he takes off on yet another meaningless test flight. He is not the only member of the family—by far—who badly need for there to be a war somewhere.
