Will is the protagonist and narrator of The Lords of Discipline, a novel which focuses on his freshman and especially senior years at the fictional Carolina Military Institute. In part, his decision to attend the Institute is designed to honor his father, a military man who dies before the main events of the narrative take place. Will is from a Southern family, but is of Irish Catholic descent. This fact sets him apart from many other members of the Institute’s student body, who hail from wealthy and well-established Protestant families.

While it would be a mistake to consider Will an outcast, it would be equally fallacious to claim that he fits in perfectly at the Institute. He is a well-liked player on his school’s basketball team; he is also committed to his studies as an English major. At heart, though, he is something of a nonconformist, and a skeptic where the Institute’s assumptions, values, and traditions are concerned. Instead of attempting to distinguish himself militarily during his time at the college, he focuses on academics and contents himself with the lowly rank of Private, which he holds even as a senior.