The Chocolate War

Title: The Chocolate War
Author: Robert Cormier
ISBN: B002AR3GAC (Audio Book)
Narrator: George Guidall

Plot Summary: Jerry Renault, a student at a prestigious Catholic boys' high school, has recently lost his mother. While at school, he is menaced by a secret society known as The Vigils, a group that enforces its own way at the school with the tacit approval of the administration. When the school's annual fund-raising chocolate sale comes around, Jerry decides not to participate, earning the wrath of both the Vigils and his teachers. Jerry's refusal to conform to the school's expectations escalates into an orchestrated display of brutal violence. Jerry ultimately emerges alive from this confrontation, but not without suffering both physical and emotional scars.


Critical Evaluation: A large part of this book's daring and innovation lies in its refusal to provide the reader with a "happy" ending: the protagonist does not save the day, his antagonists remain unpunished, and the system against which he rebels, although it may one day change, has not been altered by his actions alone. However, by highlighting the futility of Jerry's struggle, the book succeeds in emphasizing the need for change: in the school's faculty, in its students, in the social atmosphere, in the religion governing the institution, and ultimately in society itself. Rather than presenting change, then, the book presents its story as a catalyst for future change, emphasizing the various reasons why the system under which Jerry exists is in desperate need of renovation. George Guidall's narration is somewhat unctuous, but he effectively conveys the various menaces, veiled and not-so-veiled, conspiring to bring Jerry down.

Reader's Annotation: When Jerry Renault, a student at a prestigious Catholic boys' school, refuses to participate in its annual chocolate sale, he incurs the wrath of the teachers and his fellow students. Jerry is determined to stick to his principles, but his doing so may be at a greater cost than he anticipated.

About the Author: Robert Cormier was born in 1925 in Leominster, Massachusetts, the second of eight children. He started writing as a young boy at parochial school, and graduated from Leominster High School as class president. While at Fitchburg State College, he had his first short story published, and later became a radio commercial writer and journalist. He published a number of young adult novels in addition to his journalistic work, most of which dealt with protagonists battling the various ills of an antagonistic society. He lived in Fitchburg until his death in 2000, where he lived with his wife, Connie, with whom he had four children.

Genre: Fiction

Curriculum Ties: World Religions, Economics, Physical Education

Booktalking Ideas:

Hook: The climactic boxing scene near the end of the book
Approach: Scene-based
Ideas for Booktalk: Jerry keeps getting beaten, but keeps getting back up. Reflects the first scene in which he tries out for the football team and the same thing happens. Why does he keep on going despite all odds? To what extent is the fight's outcome a foregone conclusion/rigged? What does it say about the faculty and administration at Trinity that this kind of behavior is condoned? Discuss what this scene says about Jerry as a person, what readers would do in his situation, whether they have also been in a situation in which they "had" to fight someone and what they had to prove by doing it. Are parochial schools and/or private schools still like this, and if so how, if at all, do they differ in this respect from public schools?

Hook: Jerry refuses to participate in the chocolate sale. Why?
Approach: Character and plot-based.
Ideas for Booktalk: What initially motivates Jerry to refuse participation in the sale? How do his classmates react initially, and how does this change? He starts out as a heroic rebel, but forces are at work - via the Vigils and their allies in the faculty - to change this view of him, and to a certain extent this works. At the end, even his friends and sympathizers, such as they are, cannot help him. Ask readers what they think of Jerry's actions. Would they do the same, even in the same circumstances, and why or why not?


Reading Level/Interest Age: Grades 9-12


Challenge Issues: Offensive language, violence, sexual content, religious viewpoint.
This book presents a rather negative, somewhat pessimistic view of parochial schooling in general, and Catholic schooling in particular. The reader is often left to wonder how people who profess themselves men of faith can behave as they do in the book. The adolescent boys in this book, much like adolescent boys today, often use bad language and think about sex to an alarming degree, and are frequently physically threatening or outright violent towards each other. Cormier's strength as an author lies in convincing the reader that although the system in which Jerry is placed is not flawed by definition, but is flawed precisely because it has strayed from its founding tenets. Adolescents will swear and think about sex regardless of their situation, and both are relatively tame by modern standards. The violence, although disturbing on a number of levels, is not a disease in itself, but rather a symptom of a profoundly diseased system in need of healing. Readers of all ages can read much negativity into the book's ending, but the book's ultimate use in this respect is as a catalyst for discussing how the system can be changed, such that Jerry's situation does not have to happen to anyone else.

Why I Chose This Book: When I initially listened to this book, the ending shocked and infuriated me, causing me to question why one would bother reading the story in the first place if such a pessimistic end was all the author hoped to convey. The fact that the book evoked such a strong response, though, indicated to me that there were many themes that struck a nerve with me: bullying, injustice, unfair social systems. The justice-seeker in me had hoped all these problems would be resolved by the end of the book; however, the book's ultimate strength lay in showing me that in real life, such solutions are neither common nor easily attained. In this respect, it is one of the more realistic books I have read for this course.