Title:
The Chocolate War
Author: Robert Cormier
ISBN: 9780394828054
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Copyright: 1974
Genre: Fiction
Age
Range: 15+
Reader’s Annotation: Jerry Renault takes on the social
structure of Trinity
High School by refusing
to sell fundraising chocolates.
Plot Summary: Jerry Renault is a self motivated freshman
going to Trinity High School. Like every other young teen
boy he has to cope with feelings of depression, sexual frustration, and basic
philosophical questions. Some of these questions come from the recent death of
mother and the empty relationship with his father. Jerry meets the Goober. They
are fast friends. Archie Costello is an intelligent, controlling, sadistic junior
who selects students to carryout assignments for the schools secret pranksters
The Vigils. Archie is the Assigner who has the real power of the group. The
school’s headmaster is ill. Brother Leon assumes the position of acting
headmaster. He leans on Archie to get the student population to sell selling
twice as many chocolates at twice the price in the annual school-wide chocolate
fundraising event than the last year. The underhanded deal was support of the
chocolate sale for amnesty for The Vigils.
As a prank,
Archie makes Jerry deny the chocolates for ten school days. The prank backfires
as Jerry continues to refuse the chocolates. This is seen as defiance against
Brother Leon, a horrible teacher, and Archie who is a different version of
Brother Leon.
Jerry is fighting against the culture of the school. Archie and The Vigils try
non-violent ways to persuade Jerry into complying. Jerry meditates on the
sentiment "Do I dare disturb the universe?" from T. S. Eliot's "The
Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." Jerry is seen as a hero as the sales for
chocolate falls until The Vigils put their full force behind the chocolate sale.
Jerry then becomes an outcast. Archie enlists the school bully Emile Janza to
ambush Jerry just outside the school. Chocolate sales begin to rise.
Archie sets up a final stage show.
Fifty boxes of chocolate will be raffled off. A boxing match will feature Jerry
and Janza. It will have all the glory and spectacle that Archie wants. Archie
also has carte blanch from Brother Leon.
Critical Evaluation: The
Chocolate War has been well received. In 1974, The Chocolate War won School Library Journal Best Books of the
Year, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, ALA
the Best of the Best Books for Young Adults, and New York Times Notable Books
of the Year. The story has been well received by critics as well. The subject
of the book is the teen society of boys at a private high school. It is
considered a brilliant novel that is well structured, well crafted, and
maintains suspense throughout the book. It shows the personal and social morals
that teens are internally conflicted with. It has been challenged and banned
many times for sexual content, offensive language, and violence. It has gotten
a bad stigma from adults because they do not liked the ending. The ending is
bitter sweet slice of reality.
Author Information: Robert Cormier was born and has always
lived in Leominster,
Massachusets. He grew up there, went to school there, courted and married
there, and raised four children in the house where he and his wife, Connie,
still live. "I never intend to live anywhere else," he says."
There are lots of untold stories right here on Main Street."
Cormier, who was a newspaper reporter and columnist for 30
years is inspired by news events and, in some cases, by circumstances in his
own life for the basis of his plots. And, he has an outstanding ability to
create stories which capture human interest. No critic has ever captured more
succinctly Cormier's ability to make us see what motivates behavior which is
often called evil but which becomes understandable when seen through the eyes
of his characters." I take real people and put them in extraordinary
situations," he said in an interview in SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL. "I'm
very much interested in intimidation. And the way people manipulate other
people. and the obvious abuse of authority."
Robert Cormier began writing, he says," in the seventh
grade... I can't remember a time when I wasn't trying to get something down on
paper." And it has been said of him that he was in love with his
typewriter. He has won many prizes for his journalism and his novels for young
adults. Included in his awards is the Margaret A. Edwards Award of the Young
Adult Services Division of the American Library Association. This award is presented
in recognition of those authors who provide young adults with a window through
which they can view the world, and which will help them to grow and understand
themselves and their role in society." I am delighted to be the recipient
of this award," he says," because it is such a clear reflection of
what I've always hoped my novels could do--show adolsescents the bigness of
what's out there and that happy endings are not our birthright. You have to do
something to make them happen."
Cormier loves to travel and has visited almost every state
in the U.S.
A trip to Australia where he
dipped his hand in the Indian Ocean thrilled
him beyond measure. He also loves jazz, movies, and staying up late ( to hear
jazz and watch movies) and his true heroes are writers like Graham Greene,
Thomas Wolfe, and J.D. Salinger. Cormier's books have been translated into many
languages and consistently appear on the Best Books for Young Adults lists of
the American Libary Association, THE NEW YORK TIMES, and SCHOOL LIBRARY
JOURNAL. Source - http://www.ipl.org/div/askauthor/Cormier.html
Curriculum Ties: English
Challenge Issues: Language; Violence; Disobedience
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