The Chocolate War

Robert Cormier
1974

Introduction

The publication of The Chocolate War in 1974 is now seen as a ground-breaking event in the establishment of young adult literature as a separate genre. Robert Cormier's novel was originally conceived as an adult book, for all his previous fiction had been for adults. Nevertheless, it quickly became both an inspiration to other writers and publishers for teens and the standard by which much subsequent young adult literature has been judged. Shocking in its relentless and unsentimental representation of the power and control exerted by bullying adults and boys at a Catholic school, the novel was criticized by some early reviewers for its failure to include for its young readers a redeeming resolution. (Cormier had resisted pressure from a number of publishers to alter the ending.)

The plot for The Chocolate War was inspired by an event in Cormier's own life. When his son decided, without repercussion, not to sell chocolates in his school's annual sale, Cormier asked himself, "What if?" This question, he has declared, is the spark for all his writing. If the novel had been simply about harassment and intimidation among a group of boys, it would not have been in any way remarkable. What makes it disturbing is the collusion between the Catholic teaching staff and a group of boys known as the Vigils who exert a Mafia-like influence at the school and employ psychological tactics against other pupils and staff. One of The Chocolate War's principle themes is the futility of individual protests and resistance in the face of such power structures and, by implication, the importance of collective action.

Author Biography

Robert Cormier was born January 17,1925, in Leominster, Massachusetts, and has lived in the town for most of his life. After attending Fitchburg State College, he began a career in journalism, first with the radio station WTAG (1946-48). He then worked at the Worcester Telegraph & Gazette and, for a longer period, the Fitchburg Sentinel. He gave up full-time journalism in 1966 to concentrate on novel-writing, but continued to work as a columnist and associate editor for the Sentinel. He won a number of awards for his human interest column (published under the byline John Fitch IV), and a volume of autobiographical essays, edited by his wife—I Have Words To Spend: Reflections of A Small-Town Editor(1991)—helps to explain the relationship between the upbeat realism of his journalistic work and the cynicism of his imaginative fiction.

His first three books were adult novels. Although none achieved any notable success, the third, Take Me Where The Good Times Are, is significant because in it he established the fictional Monument City, a small New England town modeled on his native Leominster. Monument is the setting for much of Cormier's young adult fiction, including his fourth book, The Chocolate War. There had been a nine-year gap between his last adult novel and this, his first book published for teenagers. The delay was occasioned by considerable publisher resistance to the book and also by Cormier's own initial resistance to his agent's suggestion that the book should be submitted as a young adult novel. Although the action of the novel takes place in a closed and repressed environment at some considerable remove from the openness and permissiveness of late-sixties and earlyseventies America, the imprint of the time in which it was written is present in several interludes.

Cormier did not return to the adult novel. He has been happy to develop the niche established by The Chocolate War. His next book, I Am The Cheese, is a psychological nightmare based on the U.S. Witness Relocation Program and After the First Death went even further in depicting hopelessness. Each of these titles from the seventies remains popular, although school boards have from time to time moved to ban them from school libraries. In 1985 Cormier published the sequel Beyond The Chocolate War, in which many of the same characters continue to exert their evil influence at Trinity High. The storyline makes the theme of the earlier book—a leader's power emanates from those who allow themselves to be led—even more explicit.

A more recent title, Tenderness, about a teenage girl's fixation with a psychopathic killer, demonstrates that even in his seventies Cormier is prepared to confront daring subject matter.

Plot Summary

Part I—Setting the Scene

In the first chapter of Robert Cormier's 1974 novel, The Chocolate War, the reader is introduced to Jerry Renault, a freshman at Trinity, a private all-male Catholic high school in New England. It is early fall, and Jerry is trying out for the position of quarterback on the freshman football team. He is faring poorly, however, having just received a crushing blow from a defenseman. When he is finally able to get onto his feet again, his coach, impatient with his overall performance, sends him to the showers. As Jerry walks back to the locker room, he reflects on his sense of isolation (a feeling he experiences repeatedly in the novel), yet is nonetheless encouraged by the coach's injunction that he "show up tomorrow."

The second chapter introduces two more important characters, Archie Costello and Obie. Both are members of the officially secret student organization called the Vigils. Archie is the "Assigner" of the Vigils—the one in charge of assigning to various students the pranks and other disruptive acts that constitute the Vigils' main contribution to the school. It is a position that carries a great deal of influence with it; at least Obie, the group's secretary, terms Archie's power "awesome." The two are in the bleachers while Jerry's football practice is going on. The scene opens with an important exchange between the two characters, one in which the pessimistic outlook that seems to pervade the novel's core is first articulated:

"You're a real bastard," Obie said finally, his frustration erupting, like a coke exploding from a bottle after you shake it. "You know that?"

Archie turned and smiled at him benevolently, like a goddam king passing out favors.

"Jesus," Obie said, exasperated.

"Don't swear, Obie," Archie chided. "You'll have to tell it in confession."

"Look who's talking. I don't know how you had the nerve to receive communion at chapel this morning."

"It doesn't take nerve, Obie. When you march down to the rail, you're receiving The Body, man. Me, I'm just chewing a wafer they buy by the pound in Worcester."

Obie looked away in disgust.

"And when you say 'Jesus,' you're talking about your leader. But when I say 'Jesus,' I'm talking about a guy who walked the earth for thirty-three years like any other guy but caught the imagination of some PR cats. PR for Public Relations, in case you don't know, Obie."

Obie didn't bother to answer. You couldn't ever win an argument with Archie. He was too quick with the words.

Archie then makes some "assignments"; Jerry, over Obie's objection, is chosen for the final task recorded.

Archie is later called into the office of the school's acting headmaster, Brother Leon, to discuss the chocolate sale. Leon informs Archie that this year's sale will differ from previous years' sales in some significant ways, and he takes the unprecedented step of soliciting the help of the Vigils (though without naming them).

Roland Goubert, called The Goober, is perhaps Jerry's only friend at the school. He receives an assignment from the Vigils, which he carries out with a little last-minute help. The results of the stunt, presented in Chapter 11, cause one teacher to have a breakdown. In Chapter 6, Brother Leon, under the guise of teaching a lesson about political connivance, humiliates a student in the classroom—he is, by reputation, a feared teacher. In Chapter 7 Cormier introduces Emile Janza, the brutish upperclassman who subsequently figures so centrally in the tormenting of Jerry. It is revealed in Chapter 9 that the death of Jerry's mother affected him deeply and created a wall between Jerry and his father, a well-meaning but emotionally broken man; the force of Jerry's loneliness is brought home.

Part II—Jerry's Assignment

Chapter 13 marks a major turning point in the novel, for it is here that the chocolate sale begins in earnest, although a kickoff pep rally is described a few chapters before. Brother Leon is calling out the names of the students in his class and having them indicate whether or not they will participate in the sale; participation is supposedly voluntary. When he reaches the name "Renault," Jerry tells him that he will not sell the chocolates. His obstinacy continues through the next couple of chapters, causing a bit of a stir among the members of the student body. In Chapter 16, Leon blackmails a student into revealing that Jerry is refusing participation in order to fulfill a Vigils' assignment, which at this point is scheduled to be completed shortly. It is thus with a light heart that Brother Leon goes through the list in the following chapter—according to his information, Jerry's assignment has at this point been completed, and he anticipates Jerry's joining the sale. He receives a second surprise, then, when Jerry announces that he is "not going to sell the chocolates."

Jerry spends the rest of that day and night second guessing his action, even trying to figure out why he did what he did. He wakes up the next morning exhausted, deciding that he now knows what a hangover feels like. On his way to school, he unexpectedly receives congratulations on his action from several students, though when he gets to school, he is confronted by the Goober, who urges him to stop holding out. Jerry assures him that the Vigils are no longer involved, but claims that he "just can't" back down: "I'm committed now."

Archie, apparently for his own enjoyment, sabotages a Vigils' stunt, after which Obie vows to get even. Enthusiasm for the sale is low, in part because of Jerry's stance, and it is reported that sales are below last years' figures—a potentially disastrous situation, given that the school has committed to selling twice as much as in previous years. Several boys even discuss the merits of Jerry's stance, though none have enough courage to stop selling chocolates themselves.

The Goober then informs Jerry that he is quitting the football team and has decided not to go out for track in the spring. "There's something rotten in that school," he tells Jerry by way of explanation, then goes further still and uses the word "evil." Still he urges Jerry, unsuccessfully, to sell chocolates, while Jerry is equally unsuccessful in his attempt to recruit him back onto the team.

In Chapter 24, Brian Cochran, appointed by Brother Leon to be treasurer of the chocolate sale, tells Archie that Leon has "overextended the school's finances," and thus that if the chocolate sale is not a success, both he and the school are in trouble. That night, Archie receives a phone call from Leon, threatening him and the Vigils with serious repercussions if the sale does not succeed, and in particular if something is not done about Jerry. Thus the next day Jerry is called before the Vigils, and Archie attempts to coerce him into giving up his crusade. Jerry, though, holds his ground, and in the end Archie can only "ask" him to quit his holdout, much to the surprise, and chagrin, of Obie and John Carter, the Vigils' president.

Soon after at another Vigils' meeting, another student, an upperclassman named Frankie Rollo, acts quite defiantly to Archie and the others, until Carter loses his patience and beats up Rollo. The group attributes Rollo's cavalier attitude to the influence of Jerry's crusade and decides something must be done. Archie, having been silenced momentarily by Carter's act, proposes that they make selling the chocolates "the thing to do," and thus isolate Jerry from the rest of the student body, a plan to which the rest of the group gives provisional assent.

III. Jerry's Exile

At this point, two significant things happen: the sale of chocolates increases dramatically, and Jerry increasingly becomes an object of hostility. Concerning the chocolate sale, it becomes clear that the Vigils are orchestrating large-scale distributions of chocolates all across town. They attribute the sales to each member of the student body, so that everyone except Jerry reaches or exceeds their quota. The Goober, who has stopped selling at a certain point in solidarity with his friend, is passing by the school gym when he sees himself fraudulently awarded his fiftieth sale; the experience crushes him.

For his part, Jerry is subject to some anonymous rough treatment on the football field and constant harassing phone calls. One day he is taunted by Emile Janza for being "queer" (which he is not). Then, when he starts to show signs, despite himself, that he is ready for a fight, several other boys converge on him and he is badly beaten. After the beating, he becomes "invisible" at school—ignored by everyone, so that when he walks down the halls, the other students part before him "like the Red Sea."

IV. Jerry's Martyrdom

Around this time, the chocolate sale ends. All but fifty boxes—Jerry's boxes—have been sold, and Brother Leon is ecstatic. Archie, meanwhile, has come up with a plan for the remaining chocolates: a boxing "match," to be held on the football field one night, between Jerry and Emile Janza. Rather than a traditional free-for-all, however, the "match" will be combined with a raffle, in which the spectators (the members of the student body) can buy tickets and write down blows that they want one or the other to give to his opponent. The recipient of the punch is not allowed to avoid being hit. Archie manages through various means to convince both Jerry and Emile to participate.

The "match" begins according to plan: Carter reads out the directions on each ticket drawn, and both Jerry and Emile follow them, Emile unsurprisingly getting the better of things. Soon, though, Carter draws a ticket on which the buyer has called for an illegal below-the-belt hit, and without thinking he reads it out. He and the other Vigils immediately recognize the mistake, but it's too late: Emile, acting immediately as he has throughout, goes for Jerry's groin; Jerry understandably tries to block the blow. Emile, thinking Jerry has cheated, decides his action negates the rules altogether. He attacks Jerry with a flurry of blows, eventually knocking him out.

Chaos ensues, until the stadium lights mysteriously go out. Archie goes back to the school building to investigate and is met by Brother Jacques. Having an inkling of what has gone on with Brother Leon, the Vigils, and the chocolates, Brother Jacques chastizes Archie for this latest Vigils stunt. Leon soon shows up, though, and demonstrates to Archie's satisfaction that he is "still in command," thus putting to rest any possibility that Archie and the other Vigils will suffer any serious consequences for their stunt. Meanwhile, The Goober comforts Jerry alone in the boxing ring, waiting for an ambulance to arrive. The novel ends with Archie and Obie sitting in the bleachers talking, just as they did when they first saw Jerry.

Characters

Howie Anderson

President of the junior class, Anderson 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 in Chapter 21 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."

Brother Andrew

Jerry's art teacher. In Chapter 28 Brother Andrew asks for an art assignment which Jerry has already completed and handed in.

Danny Arcangelo

One of the characters in Chapter 21 who, in private, expresses sympathy for Jerry's stand. (Danny is in conversation with Kevin Chartier.) By extension he is being criticized for their failure to translate this into public support.

Gregory Bailey

An A-grade pupil, made to bear the brunt of Brother Leon's object lesson in political connivance (Chapter 6). "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.

Ellen Barrett

A 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.

Carlson

A senior, Carlson is described as thin and mild. Emile Janza siphons gas from Carlson's car, confident that there will not be any repercussions.

David Caroni

The recipient of a Trinity scholarship, "sweetfaced" David Caroni is blackmailed by Brother Leon in Chapter 16 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

John Carter, all-star guard on the football team and president of the Boxing Club, is also president of the Vigils. Cormier emphasizes Carter's physical prowess. In Chapter 12 he is described 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 other's tactics, and more than ready to get physical to prove that force is more effective than cleverness. In Chapter 27 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.

Tubs Casper

Casper, forty pounds overweight, is seen in Chapter 14 cycling around the neighborhood selling chocolates, intending to spend the returns on his girlfriend, Rita.

Kevin Chartier

Experiencing difficulty selling the chocolates, Kevin Chartier phones his friend Danny Arcangelo and the two of them discuss, inconclusively, joining the boycott.

Coach

The football coach, never mentioned by name, is nevertheless an important presence in the book. Encountered in the opening chapter, we see him pressing Jerry hard and accidentally spitting on him. His bullying coaching style is initially unsympathetic, but is viewed as an increasingly healthy counterpoint to the murky machinations of Archie and Leon.

Brian Cochran

A senior, 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.

Media Adaptations

• The film version of The Chocolate War, produced by Jonathan D. Krane and Simon R. Lewis, and directed by Keith Gordon, was released in 1988, starring John Glover as Brother Leon, Ilan Mitchell-Smith as Jerry, and Wally Ward as Archie. Available from Management Company Entertainment Group.
• A sound recording of an edited version of the novel was narrated by Andrew Jarkowsky and published by Westminster on a single audio cassette in 1977.
• A complete, unabridged sound recording of the novel, read by Frank Muller, recorded on four audio cassettes, was released by Old Greenwich Listening Library in 1988.

Archie Costello

Fiendishly concocting assignments for the Vigils and eventually directing his devilish ingenuity against the hero, Jerry, Archie is introduced to the reader in Chapter 2 as "the bastard" with an uncanny ability to manipulate people. He annoys his stooge, Obie, with his "phony hip moods." It is Archie who delivers the first major assignment of the novel to Roland Goubert—loosening the screws in all the furniture in Brother Eugene's classroom. His crucial role is established in Chapter 4, when Brother Leon invokes, through Archie, the Vigils' support for the upgraded annual chocolate sale. Archie blackmails another pupil, Emile Janza, by pretending to hold a photo of him masturbating in the toilet, but the real point of their chilling confrontation in Chapter 15 is to establish Janza as a crude and guileless demon in contrast to Archie's cerebral and wickedly playful malevolence.

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 in Chapter 20, when a collective assignment against Brother Jacques (Obie and the rest of the class get up and do a jig whenever Jaques utters the word "environment") backfires. 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 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 we see Archie unrepentantly admitting to Obie that he tipped Brother Leon off about the boxing match, so that he could stand at a distance and watch.

Harold Darcy

After the general mood has turned against Jerry, Darcy self-righteously speaks up in class to demand an explanation: "Everybody else is doing his part, why isn't Renault?"

Tommy Desjardins

Desjardins is cited as coming from one of the school's top families. His father is a dentist.

Brother Eugene

It is Brother Eugene's classroom, Room Nineteen, which 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.

Fontaine

A minor character notable for being one of the pupils committed to the chocolate sale. He sells ten boxes in the first week and is among the first to reach his quota.

The Goober

See Roland Goubert

Roland Goubert

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. In Chapter 12 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 in Chapters 13 and 14 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.

Mrs. Hunter

Housekeeper to Mr. Renault.

Brother Jacques

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. It is Jacques who has his hand on the light switch towards the end of Chapter 37—and who then admonishes Archie in tones of cold contempt. In the following chapter, however, Jacques' protest is undermined by the arrival of Brother Leon.

Emile Janza

Described as "a brute" with "small eyes," Janza is the type of pupil who 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, referred to in Chapter 7 as the "picture that haunted his life." Emile is a straightforwardly ruthless bully, intimidating younger pupils into buying him cigarettes. Sheer malice and enjoyment of the game motivate his participation in Chapter 31, when he accosts Jerry, accuses him (at Archie's bidding) of being a closet homosexual, and then (on his own initiative) roughs 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.

Brother Leon

Brother Leon is the pale, ingratiating, and slyly venomous Assistant Headmaster. When the Headmaster becomes sick, Leon takes over management of the school. In his teaching he controls his pupils by being intellectually unpredictable and with his ability to make examples of them, as in the cruel game he plays on Bailey in Chapter 6. It has been 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. He speaks in a whisper but there is always a barely controlled violence beneath the surface, as evidenced in Chapter 16 when he snaps a piece of chalk in two while talking to a pupil called Caroni. 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.

Obie

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 Vigil 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' 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 we find Obie in low-key conversation with Archie. "Maybe the black box will work the next time, Archie," he says. Archie treats this comment with scorn and asks Obie for a Hershey bar.

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.

Jerry Renault

Jerome E. Renault is the son of James R. Renault, a pharmacist. His mother has recently died. The reader's introduction to Jerry, in Chapters 1 and 3, is crucial. Together these chapters establish Jerry as a sportsman and a teenager with all the normal masculine urges, but one who goes out of his way to avoid confrontation. When his football coach is shouting at him and some saliva hits his face, he wants to protest, "Hey, coach, you spit on me." Instead, he is polite. And after looking at a Playboy in Chapter 3, he has a confrontation with a hippy who taunts him as a "Square boy. Middle-aged at fourteen, fifteen. Already caught in a routine." Jerry does not respond. "He hated confrontations."

He misses his 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. This individual defiance is presented 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 poster displayed in 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 ball, to play by the rules, and not to go out on a limb, not to try and disturb the universe. But Jerry cannot speak. He is taken away in an ambulance and the reader is left to wonder how serious his injuries might be.

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.

Frankie Rollo

An insolent junior who is beaten up by Carter for insulting Archie at a Vigils meeting. His taunting, particularly his statement, "Hell, you guys can't even scare a punk freshman into selling a few lousy chocolates…," forces Archie to take action against Jerry to maintain his position of authority.

John Sulkey

"Lousy at sports and a squeaker at studies," Sulkey is one of the first to reach his quota in the chocolate sale.

Themes

Courage and Cowardice

"I've got guts," Jerry murmurs to himself in the opening chapter, after hitting the ground following a heavy tackle on the sports field. Tackled three times in succession, Jerry is insulted by the coach, but he leaves the field determined to make the team. This opening scene establishes Jerry as a character who has the courage to withstand physical pain. He can get up again after being knocked down and come back for more. But there is another pain afflicting him. In the same opening chapter we discover that his mother is dead. It is the painful memory of her death, rather than the bruising he has received on the football field, which induces the nausea that ends Chapter 1. The straightforward physicality and competitiveness of football—in Chapter 28 it is called, from Jerry's point of view, the "honest contact of football"—is throughout contrasted with the psychological and emotional leverage exerted by both the Vigils and Brother Leon.

Archie is not without courage. Though he has never picked a black marble from the box (which would require him to carry out an assignment himself), the possibility is always there. He has the courage of his own convictions, especially in Chapter 27 when he resists Carter's insistence that the time for psychological tactics is over and the way should be cleared for straightforward physical bullying. Cowardice is found in the general student body of Trinity, among those who would like to join Jerry in the boycott but are too scared to do so. Some boys, John Sulkey, for example, are committed to the chocolate sale, either because they see it as a personal challenge or because they have been convinced by Brother Leon's sermons. The vast majority, however, would drop out if they could. Ultimately, they carry on not out of respect for the school, or fear of Brother Leon, but because they do not have the courage to stand up to Archie and the Vigils.

Topics for Further Study

• Pretend that you are Brian Cochran, treasurer for the chocolate sale. Design an accounts sheet on which you would be able to record the progress of the sale. Complete it according to the information given in the novel.
• Make a list of all the scenes that take place outside the school, and analyze the importance of each one.
• Illustrate the varying types of physical and psychological bullying explored in the novel, with specific reference to Archie Costello, John Carter, Emile Janza, and Brother Leon.
• You are a film director preparing to shoot the scene in which Bailey is accused of cheating. Plan very carefully how you intend to use the camera at each stage of the scene, and what you intend each shot to convey to the audience.
• Cormier worked for many years as a newspaper journalist. Imagine that, following complaints from Jerry's father, you have been sent to investigate recent events at the school. Who will you interview? What do you imagine will be their responses to your questions?

Peer Pressure

Peer pressure is an important theme in the novel, particularly the pressure to remain silent and toe the line. When Brother Leon gives his lesson in political connivance (the encouragement of evil by the failure to condemn) in Chapter 6, Cormier manages to convey several things at the same time. The irony of Leon being the agent of the message—"You turned this classroom into Nazi Germany for a few moments"—is not lost on the reader. As the book develops one can see fascist techniques being applied by both Leon and the Vigils to control behavior. In the later stages of the chocolate sale, misinformation is a key factor in maintaining peer pressure. False figures regarding individual progress towards quotas are announced. Those directly affected are flattered to have their sales figures inflated and therefore keep quiet. Others feel under increased pressure to persevere with the selling. The most poignant individual response to this particular pressure is that of Roland Goubert "The Goober" who, as a silent and secret act of solidarity with Jerry, has stopped selling chocolates after twenty-seven boxes. When he is falsely announced as having reached his quota he shrinks away without saying anything: "He willed himself to feel nothing. He didn't feel rotten. He didn't feel like a traitor. He didn't feel small and cowardly." Cormier, however, does intend the reader to see cowardice and treachery in both the individual and group behavior.

Victim and Victimization

The conversation between Archie and Emile Janza (two of a kind in some respects) in Chapter 15 is seen from Archie's point of view. Archie is victimizing Janza, pretending that he holds an incriminating photograph. Janza is observed victimizing a young freshman, forcing him to run off and obtain some cigarettes. "The world was made up of two kinds of people—those who were victims and those who victimized." This is Archie's observation. His self-awareness and lack of selfdeception are key characteristics. Brother Leon is far less straightforward, but Cormier juxtaposes the chapters in the novel very carefully. It is significant that in Chapter 16 we see Leon smoothly victimizing David Caroni into releasing information about Jerry's Vigil assignment. Leon, outwardly the respectable Assistant Head of a boy's school, is just as corrupt as Archie and Emile, and Caroni is left to wonder, "Were teachers as corrupt as the villains you read about in books or saw in movies and television?"

Individualism

In Chapter 6 Leon hypocritically praises Bailey for being "true to himself." When Jerry exhibits just this quality, Leon does all that he can to break him down. It is important to understand that Jerry's boycott of the chocolate sale is at no stage based on a point of principle relating to the sale itself. To begin with he is simply acting in accordance with a Vigil assignment. Continuing the boycott beyond the ten-day assignment is an act of individual defiance which Jerry is unable fully to explain to himself. His individual stand arises out of the circumstances of his personal life—the recent loss of his mother, the apparent tedium of his father's existence as a pharmacist—and from his fascination with the poster hanging in his locker (with its quote from T. S. Eliot, "Do I dare disturb the universe?"). It has little to do with any specific opposition to Leon's fund-raising appeal. In conversation with Goober, Jerry says, "It's not the Vigils, Goob. They're not in it anymore. It's me." At the end of the book, after the sale has succeeded and Jerry has been seriously damaged by Janza in the boxing ring, Jerry is anxious to pass on some newlyacquired knowledge to Goubert but cannot speak. However, the reader is allowed to share Jerry's point of view. For all of authority's inducements to develop individualism and to "be true to yourself," and the exhortations of hippies not to be "square," Jerry has discovered, "They don't want you to do your thing, not unless it happens to be their thing too." And more importantly he has discovered what happens if you try: "They murder you."

Good and Evil

Brother Leon's manipulative, sadistic nature is demonstrated in Chapter 16, when he deceives Caroni to get information about Jerry; in Chapter 24, when it is revealed he misused the school's finances to purchase the chocolates; and in Chapter 38, when he dismisses the brutal beating of Jerry by declaring, "Boys will be boys.…" Archie exerts a malevolent control over Trinity through his role as The Vigils' Assigner. Manipulation, fear, and intimidation force the other students to carry out his orders, which often prove destructive to those involved. By even allowing The Vigils to exist, the brothers allow corruption to flourish at Trinity. Brother Leon's willingness to share power with The Vigils, as when he asks for help with the chocolate sale, further erodes moral authority. Cormier also makes it clear that by acquiescing to Archie and Leon, the students at Trinity in essence cooperate with forces of evil, as in Chapter 6 when Leon torments Gregory Bailey while the other students remain silent.

Jerry functions as a traditional hero. He is a typical high school student with ordinary skills and talents who must overcome tremendous pressure with little to rely on except his own will. By refusing to help with the chocolate sale, Jerry stands in opposition to the corrupt, established order. That he is ultimately defeated is perhaps less important than the idea that he stood firm in his convictions, although some critics have argued that the book ends on a despairing note, as evil triumphs over good.

God and Religion

There are several biblical references in the opening two chapters. Jerry's habit of thinking one thing but saying another is compared to Peter, who denied Christ before the Crucifixion: "he had been Peter a thousand times and a thousand cocks had crowed in his lifetime." In Chapter 2 it is quickly established that the story takes place at a Catholic school, where the boys regularly participate in confession and receive communion. Obie, looking out at the football field, compares the shadows formed by the goalposts to empty crucifixes. Obie thinks to himself, "That's enough symbolism for one day," and Cormier does not press the religious theme in the rest of the novel.

Style

Point of View

The shifting narrative point of view is one of the most distinctive features of The Chocolate War. Its chapters are mostly short, and it is unusual for one character's point of view to be pursued in the following chapter. Despite this, there is no doubt as to the "hero" or main character of the novel. The opening chapter encourages the reader to identify with Jerry Renault, the young quarterback who bravely gets to his feet after a number of heavy tackles and who dreams of making the football team. Those early incidents on the football field, and Jerry's handling of them, suggest that we are to encounter a conventional hero who, through determination and courage, will overcome obstacles and achieve his objectives.

The novel has a very large cast—most of Jerry's class group is mentioned by name. The other boys from whose point of view we regularly see parts of the action are Archie Costello, Obie, Emile Janza, and Roland Goubert. However, there are still more points of view used for single and precise purposes. Two examples of these are David Caroni, who in Chapter 16 is used by Cormier as the agent for revealing Brother Leon's inherent corruption, and Brian Cochran, who in Chapter 22 and elsewhere, as treasurer for the sale, discovers and mulls over the accounting irregularities. Occasionally the narrative point of view further fragments so that one chapter will present a composite viewpoint. Cormier uses this technique to convey the ongoing chocolate sale, as in Chapter 14. The result is a book with a much more complex narrative structure than the majority of adult novels, let alone young adult novels. The deployment of multiple points of view has since become Cormier's trademark as a novelist. In The Chocolate War his use of this technique is so skillful and finely judged that the reader never becomes confused and, more importantly, never loses the underlying identification with Jerry.

Structure

The reader's sympathy with Jerry, in a book told from multiple points of view, is sustained by key interludes which occur at regular intervals throughout the novel. These interludes are different in kind from the circumstances in which other characters are put. Jerry is the only character who is observed having a life outside of school and the chocolate sale. A number of minor characters are depicted in scenes removed from school life, but they are either having telephone conversations about the sale or are out on their bikes trying to find buyers for the chocolates. Jerry has a personal life (he is grieving for his dead mother, he looks on the petty life of his pharmacist father with disdain, he fancies a girl at the bus stop, he looks at adult magazines) and, most importantly, he is the one character with conventionally noble aspirations. He aspires to be on the football team, and he is inspired by the poster hanging in his locker to stand alone and make an individual protest against the prevailing order. The structure of the novel is such that we increasingly see the story as a battle between the individual versus authority. The undercurrent of physical bullying in the school, represented by Emile Janza, encourages our expectation that the larger battle will end in a key confrontation.

Climax

Robert Cormier is on record as saying that he loves detective stories because "they always deliver a beginning, middle and end, a satisfying climax or epiphany." The ending of The Chocolate War is certainly climactic. But it is also unconventional. Our expectations of a classic confrontation, in which the hero will perhaps get bloodied but will emerge victorious, are mocked by the surreally absurd terms on which Jerry and Emile are made to fight one another in the closing scene. They have to take turns throwing punches, as directed by the crowd. Animal instincts are kept at bay by these balletic rules for only so long, and once they are let loose Jerry is brutally destroyed. The sudden eclipse of the hero and the collapse of his motivating belief in doing his own thing and daring to disturb the universe, combined with the equivocal exit of Jerry from the book (the reader is left guessing as to the seriousness of his injuries), make for a downbeat conclusion. The novel's denouement has been criticized by some commentators on children's literature for purveying the message that evil prevails. Taken at face value, the climax to The Chocolate War, and indeed the endings of many of Cormier's other novels, can be used to support this criticism.

Symbols and Imagery

Cormier's use of imagery in this novel emphasizes the fact that these events take place at a Catholic school, and religious symbolism underwrites much of the action in the novel. We do see Jerry's defeat as a kind of crucifixion, but there is certainly no simplistic allegory or correlation intended. Rather, the gently insinuated biblical references encourage us to view the events of the novel in global or even metaphysical terms.

Setting

Most of the action in The Chocolate War takes place at Trinity, a Catholic boys' school. Other than knowing that it has an athletic and football field, the reader is given very little visual description of the school. Cormier concentrates on character rather than place. But it is important for a general understanding of Cormier's work to know that he has chosen to set nearly all of his young adult fiction in and around the small town of Monument, a fictional equivalent of his own Massachusetts hometown. Trinity is not in Monument, although one of the pupils has recently transferred from Monument High. But the surrounding district is conceived as typical of suburban America, and the closed, claustrophobic environment of the school is a microcosm for the world at large.

Historical Context

The 1960s/1970s Counterculture

The Chocolate War was written in the early seventies and published in 1974. Its story is told almost without reference to the world at large. Chapter 3 is therefore highly significant. In this chapter Jerry, after taking a copy of Playboy down from the top shelf of a magazine rack and surreptitiously browsing, has an exchange at a bus-stop with a confrontational drop-out. Cormier's description of the group from which the confrontational young man emerges is both specific and various. "They were now part of the scenery like the Civil War Cannon and the World War Monuments, the flagpole. Hippies. Flower Children. Street People. Drifters. Drop-Outs. Everybody had a different name for them." In other words, they are exemplars of the counterculture that thrived in America in the late 1960s and was still a strong cultural and social presence in 1974. Jerry is mocked by their spokesman as a "square," as someone hidebound by his smart uniform, his obedience to rules, and his sense of guilt (which has just been exhibited in his recollection of having to quickly get rid of the only pornographic magazine he had ever dared take home).

Cormier, it must be noted, refrains from using the words "protesters" or "draft-dodgers" in connection with this group. They are specifically not political protesters, but social drop-outs. Fred Inglis, in his book The Promise of Happiness: Value and Meaning in Children's Fiction, writes that Cormier "sounds like another dispirited radical of the 1968 generation, of Miami and the siege of Chicago. The radical moral taken to heart after a term and a half on the steps of Nixon's Pentagon was that all structures of authority and institutions were deadly, and all would, in their super-ruthless and efficient way, break the spirit of the individual." However, cautious criticism of the book and its cultural context makes a distinction between the chord it struck with its audience in the resonances remarked upon by Inglis, and the deeper intentions of the author. Brother Leon's reprehensibly hypocritical classroom simulation of Nazi Germany is used by Cormier to incriminate both Leon himself and the other boys. Jerry, although he hates Leon from then onwards, is unaffected by the leaden political message of the lesson. His impulse has not been to protest, but to escape: "He wished he wasn't here in the classroom. He wanted to be out on the football field, fading back, looking for a receiver."

Fund-Raising and Private Education

Fund-raising fulfilled, and still fulfills, a substantial role in the annual budget of a private school such as Trinity. It also plays a part in public schools, where parent and student groups work to fund extracurricular activities from sports to music to clubs. Participation by pupils in annual raffles, sales, or other revenue-producing activities is normally noncontroversial. What makes the Trinity sale different is the application of quotas to students, the sudden doubling of the quotas (together with a doubling in the price of the chocolates), the compulsion to meet those quotas, and the corrupt duplicity of Leon's secret agreement with the Vigils.

Critical Overview

The Chocolate War can justifiably claim to be the novel which persuaded commentators to take young adult literature seriously as a new genre. The novel caused controversy on its publication and has continued to do so since. Several attempts have been made to ban it from school and college libraries and from recommended reading lists. Objections range from a general distaste for the book's portrayal of triumphant evil to specific criticism of the language used by the boys and the depiction of sexual activity. Chapter 15 recounts how Archie discovered Emile Janza masturbating in the toilet and pretended to take a photo. "Stepping into the men's room to grab a quick smoke, Archie had pulled open the door to one of the stalls and confronted Janza sitting there, pants dropping on the floor, one hand furiously at work between his legs." It was unusual to find such frank description of adolescent sexual activity in a book published for children.

It was even more unusual, outside of fantasy literature, to encounter truly evil characters in children's books. As Nancy Veglahn commented in The Lion and the Unicorn: A Critical Journal of Children's Literature: "Robert Cormier is one of the few writers of realistic fiction for young adults who creates genuinely evil characters. Unlike fantasy and science fiction books, which abound with embodiments of cosmic malevolence, realistic novels seem to shy away from villains.… [This] is not true of Robert Cormier. There is no moral blandness in his books, no picture of a world in which all will be well if everyone just tries a little harder."

It is exactly Cormier's refusal to end his books on a note of hope or uplift which his critics complain about. Six years after The Chocolate War's first publication, Norma Bagnall, writing in Top of the News, challenged the notion that Cormier was a writer of realistic fiction. Was it realistic to depict a world in which there were no decent characters capable of standing up to evil? In the case of this particular novel, she especially objected to the fact that there is no adult character in the novel ready and able to give Jerry support. "It is as inaccurate to present only the sordid and call it realistic as it has been in the past to present only the idealistic." According to the critic, the fact that the book is "brilliantly structured and skilfully written" made its distorted view of reality all the more dangerous.

This viewpoint was echoed soon afterwards by Fred Inglis, in his The Promise of Happiness: Value and Meaning in Children's Fiction. Taking Bagnall's objections one stage further, Inglis argued that there was a group of new writers for older children who were systematically destroying innocence by breeding a mood of cynicism. He chose Cormier and The Chocolate War as an exemplar of this. "What is deeply wrong with The Chocolate War… is its grossness and indelicacy in telling its childreaders that heroism is, strictly, such a dead end." He later added, "The intention of The Chocolate War seems to be to force the child directly up against the pain of pain, the facts of cruelty and oppression, by way of showing him that the adults have always told lies about the world's being a fine and benign place."

Although the book still finds its critics, it is noticeable that earlier detractors such as Bagnall and Inglis seemed to fail to grasp that the book was addressed to a new audience. It was not a book for children, but for young adults. The book's intended audience made it an immediate commercial success. It has been continually available since first publication and along with subsequent novels has helped to establish Cormier's position as America's leading young adult novelist. Sylvia Patterson Iskander, writing in the Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography, included the following summary: "[Cormier] has brought controversy and, simultaneously, a new dimension to the field of young-adult literature. He has earned the respect of his readers, regardless of their age, because of his refusal to compromise the truth as he sees it."

Criticism

Stan Walker

In the following essay, Walker, a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas, analyzes how The Chocolate War can be interpreted within the contextof Christian beliefs. He also notes that while the pessimism of the novel can be seen as a product of its times, its power to disturb readers makes it timeless.

Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War begins with a seemingly serious remark: "They murdered him." We quickly realize that this is the author's way of telling us, with humorous exaggeration, that a character, who we learn is named Jerry Renault, has just received a heavy hit during football practice. As the novel progresses, though, other details emerge, and our reading of this remark changes. We come to see in it a reference to Christ's "murder," and thus to see Jerry's rebellion against the chocolate sale and everything it stands for as being patterned in part on Christ's "rebellion." Other details complicate this association, however, so that by the end of the novel we are left not with a portrait of Christian triumph, but rather with a set of anguished questions: Is there any purity or "sincerity" (or in Christian terms, redemption) in the world, a world that seems to be so thoroughly corrupt? If there is, can one (like Christ) attain it by refusing to compromise one's beliefs—by refusing to "bend"—and thus risking everything, even being "murdered," for those beliefs? And can that refusal be an example by which others profit: can others be redeemed by such a self-sacrifice?

That these questions are "anguished" suggests that the novel's outlook is a bleak one; and indeed, there is a pervasive pessimism at the core of The Chocolate War. None of the "adult" power structures in the novel—family, church, school—seem to offer any haven to the adolescent boys who are the novel's focus. Parents, who play at best a peripheral role, are ineffectual or absent. The "brothers" at Trinity, the Catholic prep school where The Chocolate War is set, are by and large no better, either weak, like Brother Eugene, or cruel and hypocritical, like the novel's central authority figure, Brother Leon. Not only is Leon cruel and hypocritical, he is also more concerned for the school's material well-being, represented by the chocolate sale, than he is for the boys' spiritual nurturing. Indeed, his concern for the "spiritual" seems to be limited to the boys' "school spirit," his euphemism for their enthusiasm for the sale. The further disclosure that he has made some illegal transactions in setting up the sales drive, while it makes some of his actions understandable, and thus to some extent, perhaps, sympathetic, has the primary effect of sealing our verdict that he is one of the novel's arch-villains.

What Do I Read Next?

• I Am the Cheese, Cormier's second young adult novel, published in 1977, is an effective psychological thriller based on the U.S. Witness Relocation Program.
• In 1985 Cormier published a sequel to The Chocolate War. Beyond The Chocolate War includes most of the original characters. An important new character is Ray Bannister, a magician who uses a guillotine as part of his act.
• Fade (1988), one of Cormier's bleakest and most graphic novels, is a supernatural story about a New England family's ability to become physically invisible.
• Tenderness (1997) is a novel which demonstrates that Cormier, in his seventies, has lost none of his power to shock. The novel describes a teenage girl's fixation with a young psychopathic killer.
• The End of the Affair (1951) by Graham Greene is Cormier's favorite book, by his favorite author.
• Calling Home (1991) by Michael Cadnum, about how a teen's guilt over causing the death of his friend leads him into alcoholism. A reviewer in The Horn Book Magazine has said of Cadnum's work: "Not since Robert Cormier has such a major talent emerged in adolescent literature."

The other arch-villain in the novel is Archie Costello. Like Brother Leon, Archie is not a wholly unsympathetic character. We see him at points alone and vulnerable, though we probably feel that because of his hubris (excessive pride), he is more deserving of the discomfort he experiences than are the other characters in the novel (including, perhaps, Brother Leon). At the same time, it is Archie who is the guiding spirit of the Vigils, the officially secret student group that controls so many aspects of the boys' lives at Trinity. It is he who articulates the cynical outlook that so troubles the novel. In the novel's second chapter, for example, when we first meet him, he has an exchange with Obie, the Vigils' secretary, in which he claims that to him, the communion ceremony means nothing more than "chewing a wafer," while Jesus is not his "leader," but rather "a guy who walked the earth for thirty-three years like any other guy but caught the imagination of some PR cats."

The effect of these remarks is to suggest that nothing one might do has the potential for any larger/higher significance, in a "spiritual" sense—that if Jesus, the supposed Son of God, was in reality just a "guy," then we too can be nothing more than just "guys." And if we are all just "guys," then we can hope for nothing better than some form of worldly success (to have good "PR" people behind us), or failing that, survival. All action, then, is reduced to power "games," and all people, as Archie says to Carter at the boxing "match" near the end of the novel, are "bastards," "greedy and cruel." Carter, like Obie, reacts with "disgust" to Archie's statements—it is "as if there was no goodness at all in the world," he subsequently reflects—yet he, like Obie, has no answer to them. Indeed, no answer is readily forthcoming from any character in the novel, for such a response, Cormier seems to be saying, cannot be made in words, but must come in the form of action: you cannot argue the cynic out of his cynicism, in other words; you must show him that he is "wrong."

The main attempt to "respond" to Archie is of course made by Jerry Renault. As noted earlier, it is intimated from the beginning of the novel that Jerry will in some respects "imitate" Christ in his role in the novel. At the same time, it is also intimated that Jerry will be unable to fulfill this daunting task. Having gotten up after the crushing hit in the first chapter, he is accidently spat upon by his coach, and his response to this ill-treatment, to affirm that he is fine, is not what he feels it should have been: "he was a coward about stuff like that, thinking one thing and doing another—he had been Peter a thousand times and a thousand cocks had crowed in his lifetime." In comparing himself to Peter, Jerry is alluding to the Christian Last Supper and to Christ's prediction that he would be betrayed by one of his disciples and that the rest would abandon him. When Peter hears this, he says that he would never abandon Jesus, to which Jesus responds, "Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice" (Matthew 26:34). Ironically, in responding as he does to his coach, Jerry has literally "turned the other cheek" (recall that the coach spits on his cheek), and so not denied but followed Christ, by following his teachings. That Jerry views this as cowardice indicates that he is unable to see the full implications of Christ's example—that if he has "imitated" Christ, he has done so without knowing it.

In the subsequent events of The Chocolate War, neither Jerry nor any of the other characters in the novel ever realize the significance of his actions in Christian terms (ironically, given that the novel's setting is a Catholic school). Even the climactic boxing "match," reminiscent as it is of a Roman gladiatorial show, in which Jerry the "martyr" is thrown in to face the beast-like Emile Janza, produces no such realization in anyone. For Jerry at least, the more real model for his actions is T. S. Eliot's J. Alfred Prufrock, whose timid query, "Do I dare disturb the universe?", is the caption of a poster hung in his locker. Here too, Jerry is at first "[not] sure of the poster's meaning," nor does he seem to know that it is Prufrock in whose mouth Eliot puts the famous question. After a while, though, he feels he understands the poster's significance, and Prufrock's question, answered cautiously in the affirmative—"Yes, I do, I do. I think"—becomes his battle cry.

By the end of his trials, though, a far darker picture of things has emerged in the novel. After the boxing "match," Jerry does feel he has had an epiphany or deep insight into things, but it is not one that affirms his decision to "disturb the universe." On the contrary, he has decided that one should stay in line, that "doing your own thing" is useless, when that "thing" does not happen to coincide with the interests of those in power—that rebellion is "a laugh, … a fake." What Jerry has discovered, Cormier suggests, is the modern world's "heart of darkness," for in referring to Jerry's discovery as "the knowledge, the knowledge," he is assumably echoing the famous last words of Mr. Kurtz in Joseph Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness : "The horror! The horror!" As Zibby Oneal puts it in an essay in Censored Books: Critical Viewpoints, "Within himself, [Jerry] discovers, are the very things he has fought—the hatred and the violence."

With this discovery, Jerry's insistence that ignoring what he has learned will only lead to one's "murder" recalls the Christian example from the beginning of the novel, only to deny it at last. Christianity in the modern world, Cormier appears to be saying, is at best a sort of shadowy absolute against which our relative failings can be measured; at worst, it is an outdated myth with no bearing on the "real world." If there is to be any sort of "second coming," moreover, it will not be in the form of a Jerry Renault, trying to "imitate" Christ. Instead, he suggests by echoing a line from W. B. Yeats' poem, "The Second Coming" (1921), it will take the form of a general spread of coldness, hardness, and cruelty among people—the qualities that characterize figures like Archie and Brother Leon. (Yeats embodies this "coming" as a "rough beast" "with lion body and the head of a man, [and] / A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun," and says that just after he has this vision of the "beast," "The darkness drops again." Cormier alludes to this final line at the end of Chapter 37 when Obie catches a glimpse of Brother Leon at the top of a hill, watching the "match" below: "The face vanished as the darkness fell.")

In coming to terms with the novel's pessimistic core, we should consider it in the context of the United States of the early 1970s, when The Chocolate War was published. The country was then still emerging from a very tumultuous and largely unprecedented part of its history, marked by widespread unrest, much of it violent. Widespread, too, was the belief among the protesters that all leaders and all systems of control should be distrusted, and eventually done away with, if possible. "Do your own thing" was a byword of the times, and for a while many felt that if everyone truly and honestly did so, the bad "things" (war, racial hatred) would somehow come out right. By the end of the 1960s, however, the fact that the war in Vietnam was still raging, combined with some ugly outbreaks of civil violence and a more general breakdown of the drug-based "counterculture," produced in many people feelings of fatigue, bitterness and disillusion, even paranoia—feelings that only became sharper with the emergence of the Watergate scandal in 1973. These widespread feelings are reflected not only in some of the literature of the period (e.g., Robert Stone's Dog Soldiers), but also in movies (The Parallax View, Serpico) and other media. This soured idealism is in evidence as well in The Chocolate War, not only in Jerry's conclusion about the uselessness of "doing your own thing," but also for example in Cormier's use of the word "beautiful" (another byword of 1960s idealism), which is pervasive and ironic.

If this pessimism was widespread in American culture generally, though, it was, Zibby Oneal reminds us, still very new to young people's fiction: "The Chocolate War was immediately—and understandably—controversial. It broke new ground … toppling dearly-held taboos, upsetting any number of conventions." In its willingness in particular to tell young adults that sometimes "failure happens" and "despair ensues," Oneal notes that the book still has the power to disturb readers. It is this continuing challenge to readers as much as anything else, perhaps, that makes The Chocolate War still timely—still more than a period piece.

Source: Stan Walker, in an essay for Novels for Students, Gale, 1997.

Patricia J. Campbell

In the following excerpt, Campbell discusses Cormier's writing style, use of imagery, and literary and biblical allusions in The Chocolate War.

"They murdered him." The opening line of The Chocolate War. Three words that describe the whole movement of the plot. The process of "murdering" Jerry Renault is the subject; it remains only to tell who and why and how they felt about it. And what it meant.

On the surface the story is straightforward enough, moving along quickly in brief, intense scenes. We first see Jerry slamming through a football practice. He is a freshman at Trinity High School in Monument, and making the team is important to him, a small compensation for the recent death of his mother and the gray drabness of his life with his defeated father. The camera shifts to the stands; there we meet Archie, the villainous brains of the secret society called the Vigils. He is plotting "assignments" with his henchman Obie, cruel practical jokes to be carried out by selected victims. On the way home, Jerry is confronted at the bus stop by a hippie vagrant who challenges his passive conformity. Meanwhile, the malevolent Brother Leon, acting headmaster of Trinity, has called Archie into his office to break the traditional conspiracy of silence about the Vigils by asking for their help in the school chocolate sale. As Archie later discovers, Leon, in a bid for power while the headmaster is in the hospital, has overextended the school's funds to take advantage of a bargain in twenty thousand boxes of chocolates. Archie is delighted to have the vicious brother capitulate to him. Now we see Archie in action, as an inoffensive kid called The Goober is assigned to loosen every screw in a classroom so that it falls into debris the next morning at the first touch. But no assignment is complete until Archie has drawn from a box containing six marbles—five white and one black. If the black turns up—as it never has yet—Archie himself must carry out the assignment. But again the marble is white. Next we see Leon in action, tormenting a shy student with false accusations of cheating while the class watches tensely, then turning on the group to accuse them of condoning the cruelty by their silence. An even more vicious character is the bestial Emile Janza, who is in bondage to Archie over an obscene snapshot. Now the cast is complete and the action begins.

To show Leon where the power lies, Archie secretly assigns Jerry to refuse to sell the chocolates for ten days. Brother Leon is enraged but impotent as every day at roll call Jerry continues to answer "No." Suspecting a plot, Leon calls honor student David Caroni into his office and threatens to spoil the boy's perfect academic record with an undeserved F unless he reveals the secret. Terrified, Caroni tells him about the assignment. Finally the ten days are up, but Jerry, for reasons he only dimly understands, still continues stubbornly to refuse to sell the chocolates. Surreptitious approval for Jerry's stand begins among the other students, and for the first time he begins to understand the words on a poster he has taped in his locker: "Do I dare disturb the universe?" The sales begin to drop off. Leon, panicked, pressures Archie; Archie pressures Jerry before the Vigils, but Jerry clings to his resolve. Soon it becomes apparent that the power of both Leon and the Vigils will be destroyed by the failure of the chocolate sale. When Carter, the jock president of the Vigils, in frustration resorts to his fists to subdue a contemptuous assignee at a Vigils' meeting, Archie realizes Jerry's resistance must be destroyed utterly. The Vigils take charge of the chocolates, and under their secret management sales mount dramatically. With this turn of the tide, the school is caught up in the enthusiasm. Jerry is ostracized and tormented, first secretly by the Vigils and then openly by the whole student body. Finally Archie prods Emile Janza to taunt Jerry into a fistfight, but characteristically Emile hires some children to do the actual beating. The Goober, in a belated show of support, decides to stop selling, but his gesture is futile. Soon the sale is over, and only Jerry's fifty boxes of chocolates remain. Archie conceives a diabolical scheme for final vengeance. Under cover of a supposed night football rally, he stages a "raffle" for the last boxes of chocolates. He offers Jerry "a clean fight" with Emile Janza, and Jerry, wanting desperately to hit back at everything, accepts. Only when he and Emile are already in the boxing ring are the rules explained. The raffle tickets are instructions for blows and the recipient is forbidden to defend himself. But now Carter and Obie come forward with the black box. Archie's luck holds; the marble is white. The fight begins as planned, but Emile's animal rage is quickly out of control, and the mob goes wild as he beats Jerry savagely. The carnage is stopped when one of the brothers arrives and turns out the lights, but it is too late for Jerry. Terribly injured and lying in The Goober's arms, he begs him not to disturb the universe, but to conform, to give in. An ambulance takes him away, and Archie, who has seen Brother Leon watching with approval in the shadows, is left triumphant.

The novel works superbly as a tragic yarn, an exciting piece of storytelling. Many young adults, especially younger readers, will simply want to enjoy it at this level, and Cormier himself would be the first to say that there is nothing wrong with that. A work of literature should be first of all a good story. But a work of literature also has resonance, richness, a broader intent than just the fate of the characters. For the reader who wants to dig a bit beneath the surface, there is a wealth of hidden meaning and emotion in The Chocolate War. How does Cormier achieve this atmosphere of dark, brooding inevitability? What are the overarching themes from which the events of the plot are hung? And, most of all, just what is the crucial thing that he is trying to tell us?

A look at Cormier's style in this book will show first of all the driving, staccato rhythms. The sentences are short and punchy, and the chapters are often no more than two pages. He uses dialogue to move the action quickly forward and to establish character and situation in brief, broad strokes. His technique is essentially cinematic; if he wants to make a psychological or philosophical point he does so visually with a symbolic event or an interchange between characters, rather than reflecting in a verbal aside. Tension is built by an escalating chain of events, each a little drama of its own. "Rather than waiting for one big climax, I try to create a lot of little conflicts," he explains [in "An Interview with Robert Cormier" in Lion and the Unicorn]. "A series of explosions as I go along."

The point of view snaps back and forth from boy to boy in succeeding chapters, a more focused use of the technique called "omniscient observer." First we see Archie through Obie's eyes, then we are inside Jerry's head, then we watch Leon and The Goober squirm under Archie's gaze, then we are looking up at him from Emile's dwarfish mind, then we watch Brother Leon's classroom performance through Jerry's quiet presence, and so on. The variety of perspectives develops our understanding of the characters and reveals the complex interweaving of motivations and dependencies. The shift is unobtrusive but can be easily detected by a close look at the text. Less subtly, there are occasional tags that clue the reader to a change in voice: Brian Cochran and Obie, for instance, are inclined to think, "For crying out loud!," while Archie, among others, is addicted to the ironic use of the word beautiful. Cormier is too fine a writer, of course, to descend to imitation slang in order to indicate that this is a teenager speaking. Nothing dates a book more quickly than trendiness, as he learned from "The Rumple Country," and his understanding of the quality of adolescence goes far deeper than picking up the latest expression.

Much has been made of Cormier's imagery, and many essays and articles have been written on his metaphors and similes, his allusions and personifications. Sometimes it seems that Cormier is merely exercising his virtuosity for the reader: "his voice curled into a question mark," or "he poured himself liquid through the sunrise streets." But most of the time his metaphors are precisely calculated to carry the weight of the emotion he is projecting. Carter, about to tackle Jerry, looks "like some monstrous reptile in his helmet." Leon, thwarted, has "a smile like the kind an undertaker fixes on the face of a corpse." Jerry, happy, scuffles through "crazy cornflake leaves" but, sad, sees autumn leaves flutter down "like doomed and crippled birds." Jerry's father, preparing their loveless dinner, slides a casserole "into the oven like a letter into a mailbox." Sometimes the imagery is vividly unpleasant, as some reviewers have complained, but it is always appropriate to the intensity of the thing that Cormier is trying to say. There is a whole bouquet of bad smells in The Chocolate War, starting with Brother Leon's rancid bacon breath. The evening comes on as "the sun bleeding low in the sky and spurting its veins." Sweat moves like small moist bugs on Jerry's forehead. The vanquished Rollo's vomiting sounds like a toilet flushing.

Literary and biblical allusions, too, enrich the alert reader's experience of the novel. Shakespeare, the Bible, and the poetry of T.S. Eliot are the most obvious sources. "Cut me, do I not bleed?" thinks Emile, like Shylock. For Jerry, like Saint Peter, a thousand cocks have crowed. The quotation on the poster in his locker is from Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." [Bruce Clements in Horn Book ] has gone so far as to write an essay drawing parallels between Jerry and Hamlet, Archie and lago. Cormier denies building in this particular analogy, but admits that such references may come from his subconscious. The sophisticated reader, too, can absorb them subliminally, without conscious analysis.

Many of these allusions are not isolated flourishes, but fit together into larger structures of meaning. As one example, the Christian symbolism in The Chocolate War is an indication of the importance of the book's theme to Cormier. Before tracing that imagery, however, it is essential to clarify that the school itself is not part of this symbolism. It is a gross misunderstanding of the theme of the book to interpret it as an attack on parochial schools or the Catholic Church. If that had been Cormier's intention, it should be quite clear from his biography that he would have drawn on his childhood memories to picture a school where nuns, not brothers, presided. No, the fact that Trinity is a Catholic school is as irrelevant to the meaning of the story as that fact is irrelevant to the characters. But Cormier does use Christian symbolism to show the cosmic implications of the events he is relating. When Jerry refuses to sell the chocolates, the language suggests the Book of Revelation [as Betty Carter and Karen Harris state in "Realism in Adolescent Fiction" in Top of the News]: "Cities fell. Earth opened. Planets tilted. Stars plummeted." In the first chapter, the goal posts remind Obie of empty crucifixes, and in the last chapter, after Jerry's martyrdom, they again remind him of—what? In his graceless state, he can't remember. When Jerry is challenged to action by the hippie, the man looks at him from across a Volkswagen so that Jerry sees only the disembodied head. The image is John the Baptist, he who was beheaded by Herod after he cried in the wilderness to announce the coming of Christ. Archie's name has myriad meanings from its root of "arch": "principal or chief," "cleverly sly and alert," "most fully embodying the qualities of its kind"; but most significantly, the reference is to the Archangel, he who fell from Heaven to be the Fallen Angel, or Lucifer himself. The Vigils, although Cormier admits only to a connotation of "vigilantes," resonate with religious meaning. The candles placed before the altar in supplication are vigil candles, and a vigil is a watch on the night preceding a religious holiday. The members of the gang stand before Archie, who basks in their admiration like a religious statue before a bank of candles [according to Kenneth L. Donelson and Alleen Pace Nilsen in Literature for Today's Young Adults]. But most important, the understanding of the ultimate opposing forces of good and evil in The Chocolate War is a deeply Christian, or perhaps even a deeply Catholic, vision.

Source: Patricia J. Campbell, "The Chocolate War," in Presenting Robert Cormier, revised edition, Twayne Publishers, 1989, pp. 40–51.

Patricia J. Campbell

In the following excerpt, Campbell describes the ways Leon, Archie, and Emile personify evil.

[Text Not Available]

[Text Not Available]

[Text Not Available]

Source: Patricia J. Campbell, "The Chocolate War," in Presenting Robert Cormier, revised edition, Twayne Publishers, 1989, pp. 40–51.

Sources

Norma Bagnall, "Realism: How Realistic Is It? A Look at The Chocolate War," in Top of the News, Vol. 36, no. 2, Winter, 1980, pp. 214-17.

Fred Inglis, "Love And Death In Children's Novels," in his The Promise Of Happiness: Value And Meaning in Children's Fiction, Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 271-291.

Sylvia Patterson Iskander, "Robert Cormier," in Concise Dictionary of American Literary Biography: Broadening Views 1968-1988, Gale, 1989, pp. 34-51.

Nancy Veglahn, article in The Lion And The Unicorn: A Critical Journal of Children's Literature, June, 1988, pp. 12-18.

For Further Study

Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Vol. 19, Gale, 1996, pp. 65-76.

A full-length sketch which includes useful summaries of Cormier's other books and ample reference to contemporary reviews.

Betty Carter and Karen Hamris, "Realism in Adolescent Fiction: In Defense of The Chocolate War," in Top of the News, Vol. 36, No. 3, Spring, 1980, pp. 283-85.

A direct response to Norma Bagnall's essay in the previous edition of the journal.

Paul Heins, review of I Am the Cheese, in The Horn Book Magazine, Vol. LIII, No. 4, August, 1977, pp. 427-28.

Heins, reviewing Cormier's next book after The Chocolate War, calls it "a novel in the tragic mode, cunningly wrought, shattering in its emotional implications."

Anne Scott MacLeod, "Robert Cormier and the Adolescent Novel," in Children's Literature in Education, Vol. 12, No. 2, Summer, 1981, pp. 74-81.

An attempt to portray Cormier as a political novelist.

Anita Silvey, in an interview with Robert Cormier, Part 1, in The Horn Book Magazine, Vol. LXI, No. 2, March-April, 1985, pp. 145-55.

In this interview Cormier discusses his initial resistance to writing a sequel to The Chocolate War.

Joe Stines, "Robert Cormier," in Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 52: American Writers for Children since 1960, Gale, 1986, pp. 107-14.

The entry covers all Cormier's work up to 1985, including his three early adult novels, and includes a page from the penultimate draft of Beyond The Chocolate War, showing the author's corrections.