The Chocolate War
- For the film adaption, see The Chocolate War (film).
| Author | Robert Cormier |
|---|---|
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 271 pp |
| ISBN | 0394828054 |
| OCLC | 722968 |
| LC Class | PZ7.C81634 Ch |
| Followed by | Beyond the Chocolate War |
The Chocolate War is a young adult novel by American author Robert Cormier and first published in 1974. It was adapted into a film in 1988. Although it received mixed reviews at the time of its publication, some reviewers have argued it is one of the best young adult novels of all time.[1] Set at the fictional Trinity High School, the story follows protagonist Jerry Renault as he challenges the school's cruel, brutal, and ugly mob rule. Because of the novel's language, the concept of a high school's secret society using intimidation to enforce the cultural norms of the school, and the protagonist's sexual ponderings, it has been the frequent target of censors and appears at number three on the American Library Association's list of the "Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books in 2000-2009."
The sequel to The Chocolate War, Beyond the Chocolate War, was published in 1985.
Plot
The novel is told in an omniscient third-person point of view, though the narrator's focus alternates among several students, including Jerry, The Goober, Archie, Obie, Emile, and other Trinity students.
The novel's protagonist Jerry Renault is a self-determined and solitary freshman at the private Catholic preparatory high school Trinity. Throughout the novel, in addition to occasional sexual frustration, Jerry frequently ponders basic existential questions, both signified in part by a quotation posted inside his locker: "Do I dare disturb the universe?" from T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." At Trinity The Vigils [sic], a secret, student-run society, maintain a degree of control by giving their peers "assignments" that range from ridiculous to cruel. Though The Vigils is nominally led by the athletic star boxer John Carter, it is the intelligent and manipulative Archie Costello who exerts the most influence over the group.
When acting headmaster Brother Leon overextends his ambition by committing the students to sell twice as many boxes of chocolates at twice the price in the annual school chocolate sale, he reaches out to Archie and The Vigils to lend support for the effort. Archie is seduced by the promise of having the headmaster's implicit support for the group, and agrees. As if exulting in the potential of his power, Archie assigns Jerry to refuse to sell any chocolate for ten days. Jerry complies with the group, but then persists in his refusal to sell even after the ten days have passed. Both Brother Leon and The Vigils are incensed by Jerry's resistance, which threatens their ability to control the student body.
Jerry's refusal to participate is seen by many peers as heroic, but at Brother Leon's insistence The Vigils put their full force behind the chocolate sale, and in doing so set Jerry up as a villain to be harassed and bullied. Archie enlists the school bully Emile Janza to brutally attack Jerry, but Jerry maintains his defiance. In a final show of power, Archie and The Vigils concoct a final event for the chocolate sale: a boxing match between Jerry and Emile in which each student chooses which blows will be laid by combatants. The match is halted by Brother Jacques, but not before Jerry is brutally beaten by Emile. Floating in and out of consciousness, Jerry says to his only friend, Goubert, that there was no way to win and that he should have just gone along with what everyone wanted him to do. Though Archie is caught and confronted by Brother Jacques, Brother Leon intervenes on Archie's behalf, implying that the next year Archie's power will be sustained by this new headmaster.
Characters
Main characters
Jerry Renault (Jerome E. Renault) is a sportsman and a teenager with all the normal masculine urges, but one who goes out of his way to avoid confrontation. He misses his late mother and, sensing the drabness in his father's working life, develops a desire to do something with his own life. His refusal to participate in the chocolate sale is initially part of a Vigil assignment lasting ten days, but some inner volition leads him to extend his boycott beyond this period. Cormier presents this individual defiance in earth-shattering terms: "Cities fell. Earth opened. Planets tilted. Stars plummeted. And the awful silence." Jerry's lone protest is partly inspired by a sticker stuck to the back of his locker. It shows a man walking alone on the beach, with a captioned quote from poet T. S. Eliot: "Do I dare disturb the universe?" Beyond answering this challenge Jerry has no satisfactory explanation for his friend The Goober, or for himself, as to why he is still refusing to sell the chocolates.
Jerry becomes the target of a Vigil campaign to force him to join the chocolate sale. There are anonymous phone calls to his home. His locker, including the important poster, is ransacked. An art assignment is stolen. He is beaten up by Emile Janza and some of his cronies, and then systematically ostracized. Presented with the opportunity of getting back at Janza, he agrees to Archie's plans for a boxing match on the athletics field. The outcome of this final Vigil antic is that Jerry is badly beaten and seriously hurt. When The Goober leans over him, Jerry wants to tell him to play by the rules, and not to try and "disturb the universe," but is too badly injured to even speak. He is taken away in an ambulance and the reader is left to speculate on his fate. Although the action in the novel is not always seen from Jerry's point of view, he is clearly the pivotal character, and the one with whom the reader sympathizes. The novel was shocking in its time because of the manner in which its main character was so clearly and unequivocally defeated.[citation needed]
Archie Costello is introduced as "the bastard" with an uncanny ability to manipulate people. As the "assigner" of The Vigils, Archie eventually directs his devilish ingenuity against the protagonist, Jerry. He annoys his stooge, Obie, with his "phony hip moods." Archie delivers the first major assignment of the novel to The Goober — loosening the screws in all the furniture in Brother Eugene's classroom. His crucial role is established when Brother Leon invokes, through Archie, The Vigils' support for the upgraded annual chocolate sale. Archie provides an unwholesome line of communication between the adults and the students. He is not above taking advantage of this position to gain personal amusement at his fellow Vigils' expense, as when a collective assignment against Brother Jacques backfires. Obie and the rest of the class are assigned to stand up and do a jig whenever Jaques utters the word "environment"; Jacques, clearly tipped off in advance by Archie, goes out of his way to used the word as often as possible, with exhausting results. This episode further exacerbates Obie's antagonism towards Archie. Archie also blackmails another pupil, Emile Janza, by pretending to have a photo of Janza masturbating in the toilet.
Archie is eventually persuaded by Brother Leon that pressure must be brought to bear on Jerry to force him to sell chocolates. He begins, in conjunction with Emile Janza, by arranging to have Jerry accused of being a "queer," and then beaten up. He then stage-manages the climactic final encounter of the novel, a boxing match between Jerry and Emile. At the end Archie unrepentantly admits to Obie that he tipped Brother Leon off about the boxing match, so that Leon could stand at a distance and watch.
Roland Goubert, nicknamed The Goober, is tall and skinny and good at running. He has bad acne. From the moment he is made the subject of the first assignment — he spends over six hours loosening the screws in Brother Eugene's room and eventually has to have Vigil assistance to complete the task — the reader is made to sympathize with him, and to feel that he is a potential ally for Jerry, such as when he makes the most of a pass from Jerry and scores for the freshman football team. We sometimes see things from his point of view, particularly when the drama of the chocolate sale is developed in terms of Goubert's apprehension of Brother Leon's state of mind. Towards the climax of the book he is amongst those who have their sales falsely reported. It is claimed that he has reached his quota when he has, in fact, sold only twenty-seven boxes. This is a turning point. He does not speak up and rushes to his locker in tears, knowing that he has betrayed Jerry. After this he is absent from school for a number of days, before returning in time to witness Jerry's destruction in the boxing ring.
Brother Leon is the ingratiating and slyly venomous Assistant Headmaster. When the Headmaster becomes sick, Leon takes over management of the school. He controls his pupils by being intellectually unpredictable and making examples of them, as in the cruel game he plays on Bailey. He speaks in a whisper but there is always a barely controlled violence beneath the surface, as evidenced when he snaps a piece of chalk in two while talking to a pupil called Caroni.
His decision to double the quota and the price in the annual chocolate sale, and the financial foolhardiness of this project, leads him to seek a commitment of support from The Vigils. Once he has identified Jerry as the primary cause for the poor general progress of the sale, he becomes obsessed with revenge. The treasurer of the sale, Brian Cochran, compares his demeanor to that of a "mad scientist in an underground laboratory." The practicalities of revenge are handed over to Archie, but Leon comes forward at the horrible denouement to the boxing match to stand in triumph beside Archie. In most respects Leon has won: the chocolate sale has achieved its objectives, Jerry has been beaten, and an overt partnership has been forged with The Vigils.
Trinity students
Howie Anderson, president of the junior class is notable for almost knocking out Carter in an intramural boxing match. Described as an "intellectual roughneck," he plays only a tiny part in the novel, yet his appearance is significant for his refusal to agree to Richy Rondell's suggestion of a class boycott in support of Jerry. Howie says, "No, Richy. This is the age of do your own thing. Let everybody do his thing. If a kid wants to sell, let him. If he doesn't, the same thing applies."
Gregory Bailey is an A-grade pupil made to bear the brunt of Brother Leon's object lesson in political connivance early in the novel. "You turned this classroom into Nazi Germany for a few moments," Leon says, after the class has failed to defend Bailey against the accusation of cheating.
David Caroni, the recipient of a Trinity scholarship, is blackmailed by Brother Leon into trading information about Jerry Renault's Vigils assignment (a ten-day embargo on chocolate selling) in return for having a wrongly-marked F-grade paper reconsidered. Caroni finds the episode deeply dispiriting: "If teachers did this kind of thing, what kind of world could it be?"
John Carter, all-star guard on the football team and president of the Boxing Club, is also president of The Vigils. Cormier describes him as a "big beefy varsity guard who looked as if he could chew freshmen up and spit them out." Although elsewhere referred to as "almost as big a bastard" as Archie, Carter is a more straightforward bully. He is distrustful of the others tactics, and more than ready to get physical to prove that force is more effective than cleverness. Late in the novel, Archie disapproves of Carter's readiness to beat up an insolent junior, Frankie Rollo. In a key moment Carter flattens him with a single punch and effectively puts Archie on probation. Carter disagrees with Archie's decision to associate The Vigils with the chocolate sale.
Brian Cochran, a senior and not "exactly a hotshot in the psychology department," who is volunteered by Brother Leon to be treasurer of the chocolate sale, a job which he performs with clerical efficiency. In the course of the sale he becomes aware that sales are being falsely attributed to certain individuals in order to encourage others. He keeps his disapproval to himself. Ultimately, when the sale is pronounced over, he is worried by the tidiness of the figures, but again keeps quiet.
Emile Janza is described as "a brute" with "small eyes." Janza likes to sit at the front of the class, infuriating the teacher with a soft whistling or a tapping of the foot. He was once caught by Archie with his trousers down, masturbating in the toilet. For a long time he believes that Archie has an incriminating photograph. Emile is a straightforwardly ruthless bully, intimidating younger pupils into buying him cigarettes. Sheer malice and enjoyment of the game motivate him to accost Jerry, accuse him (at Archie's bidding) of being a closet homosexual, and then (on his own initiative) rough him up with a group of accomplices. Archie is then able to use this incident to set up the final, bizarre boxing match between Emile and Jerry.
Obie is Archie's stooge and general errand-boy for The Vigils. He has a thin, sharp face, is constantly yawning, and is presented as intellectually inferior to Archie, whom he alternately admires and detests. He is manipulated by Archie and often made to take an active part in one of the assignments, such as the stunt perpetrated on Brother Jacques. This is a festering cause of resentment. At the end of the book Obie attempts to outwit Archie by unexpectedly presenting him with The Vigils' "black box" of marbles (which serves as a check on Archie's power) at the start of the boxing match and challenging him to pick two. In the final chapter Obie, in low-key conversation with Archie, says "Maybe the black box will work the next time, Archie," to which Archie responds with scorn.
Teachers
Brother Andrew is Jerry's art teacher. He asks for an art assignment which Jerry has already completed and handed in. It is implied that other students stole the assignment to humiliate Jerry.
The football coach, never mentioned by name, is nevertheless an important presence in the book. Encountered in the opening chapter, he presses Jerry hard and spits on him. His bullying coaching style is initially unsympathetic, but is an increasingly healthy counterpoint to the murky machinations of Archie and Leon.
Brother Eugene is an instructor at Trinity. Eugene's classroom, Room Nineteen, is the subject of the first major Vigil assignment undertaken in the book. All the screws are loosened so that every item of furniture will collapse at the merest touch. Brother Eugene is destroyed by this experience and is absent from the school in the second half of the novel, presumed to be on sick leave.
Brother Jacques is a new teacher who appears halfway through the novel and is untainted by the regime. He is quickly made to bear the brunt of a Vigil stunt, but he has been forewarned by Archie and is able to turn the tables on the boys. Jacques admonishes Archie in tones of cold contempt after the fight, but his protest is undermined by the arrival of Brother Leon.
Other characters
Ellen Barrett is a pretty girl Jerry looks forward to seeing at the bus stop. Jerry's hopes of dating her are ruined after she mistakes him for another boy and talks rudely to him over the phone.
Mr. James R. Renault, Jerry's father, is a pharmacist. He works irregular hours and is often asleep when at home. His favorite word is "fine" and he has a resigned outlook on life, but Jerry considers his father's existence to be dull and meaningless.
Critical Reception
The book was well recieved by critics. The New York Times said, "The Chocolate War is masterfully structured and rich in theme; the action is well crafted, well timed, suspenseful; complex ideas develop and unfold with clarity."[2]
Children's Book Review Service said "Robert Cormier has written a brilliant novel."
Film adaptation
The Chocolate War inspired the 1988 film of the same name, directed by Keith Gordon. It starred John Glover, Wallace Langham, Ilan Mitchell-Smith, and Jenny Wright.