The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
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Book Reviews of The Chocolate War
Book Review: principle before action
Summary: 2 Stars
Supposedly, this is a young adult classic, but honestly, I'm not sure why. It's just not very good. Sure, it's controversial (the characters swear and think about masturbation a lot), but that's not a good enough reason for it to keep being assigned in schools.
Also, I think the thing that should make the book controversial is its portrayal of gross cruelty by students and certain teachers. Not that I'm worried that kids will suddenly become cruel just by reading this book (those who are going to be cruel tend to come by it naturally, after all), but if we're worried about exposing children to unsavory things, it ought to cruelty for it's own sake.
But what I really didn't like about this book was that although we're told there's a principle behind the actions of Jerry, who refuses to sell the chocolates, we're never told what the principle is. There's some suggestion that Jerry himself isn't really sure what his principle is, but in the context of the book, that's just not good enough.
It all started when Jerry is "assigned" by the Vigils (the school's student secret society, which doesn't actually seem to be much of a secret to anyone) to refuse to sell the chocolates for 10 days. He does (there's no suggestion that he even thinks about refusing the "assignment") but then continues to refuse to sell the chocolates after the 10 days are up, even after he gets another "assignment" that he start selling the chocolates. But why does he continue to refuse? Is it something about the chocolate sale itself, or is it about defying the Vigils? We don't know. The action of defiance seems to be more important than the principle behind it. I think Cormier got it backward.
Book Review: Not a very good book.
Summary: 2 Stars
Personnaly, I hated the chocolate war. It was very obscenm and profane for starters. It was also not particuarly interesting and overall not a book. Moreover, it has a terrible ending ad teaches terrible moral lessons I would reccomend to someone to read. It;s not the worst book I've ver read, but it's up there.
It's about a kid name Jerry Renault who is just trying to fit in and wants to play on the football team. everything was fine iuntill he got an assaignment from the Vigils, a secret society of students, who for all intents and purposes, run the school. The vigils tell jerry not to sell chocolates at the annual sale for 10 days, when Jerry still doesn't sell chocolates, he risks life and limb for the sole purpose of being different.
Book Review: It's okay to do your own thing so long as it's everyone else's thing too!?
Summary: 1 Stars
I was made to read The Chocolate War back in my early teens. I remember someone telling me that it had loosely been based on actual events. I think that added to the bitter taste it left in my mouth.
The Chocolate war, as I recall it, tells the story of a boy in a very posh school some thirty or forty years ago. I remember the film 'updated it' by having it set in the eighties and where he once ran into a hippie one one scene he now runs into a punk. But I digress.
The protagonist is pressured into selling / buying chocolates for the school. The school's head master (or dean) pretty much recruits the school's thugs to enforce the forced 'volunteer' work. The details of this are blurry to me now all these years later but the ending is still vividly clear in my mind.
Our hero tries very hard to be an individual, to do this own thing and be independent, trying to stand up for his own rights out of principle but then...
Well, at the end of the book the protagonist gets severely beaten and it ends on the note 'It's okay to do your own thing so long as it's everyone else's thing too.' I understand what this book tried to do but all it seemed to do was frighten my fellow classmates of the time into conformity. This is the sort of book that actually discourages free thought and individuality. It's stark, bleak and hopeless. For a fourteen-year-old reading it the only message they get is 'If you try to be yourself around other kids you'll get your ass kicked.' What sort of lesson is that?
I'm all for reading the classics with social commentaries but I don't think this should be required reading for early teens. I think, instead, a more hopeful one taking pride in being an individual should be read instead. The adventures of Robin Hood would be a good example. Children in their early teens are already confused and dealing with peer pressure. And being told 'Be yourself.' can't work if your required reading shows a child being pummeled for just that.
So it's not so much that I think The Chocolate Wars are a bad book but looking back on it now at age twenty-eight I don't think it should be the required reading of teenagers.
By the way, I am a book lover, but you're going to find most of my negative reviews here are going to be toward books I was required to read growing up and how my teacher / fellow students responded to them such as The Old Man and the Sea and Lord of the Flies. Though there were some required readings I did like a lot such as Farenheit 451 and Escape to White Mountains.
Book Review: Disappointed by poor writing
Summary: 1 Stars
Another in the group of young adult books I bought for my wife to help her develop her reading skills before we get to the states and she has a go at attending college in America.
I had my doubts about this one when I picked it on Amazon, but it sounded kind of interesting in a "Dead Poet's Society" meets "1984" kind of way, and I gave it a shot. It was a disappointment.
For such a simple story, it seems that it would be easy enough for the author to execute one of the most basic tasks of novel writing: resolving the conflict in a way that effects a change in the main character. With The Chocolate War, however, Robert Cormier has not only failed to make a change in his main character - he has failed to even choose a main character.
** This review may spoil the novel a bit if you read further.**
That is, the author tries to have his cake and eat it too by maintaining two main characters - Archie and Jerry - throughout the entire book. Instead, however, he simply ends up with a big cake-y mess at the end, where nothing changes, the main characters engage in some final meaningless self-reflection, and the reader hardly cares.
The real disappointment is that there were multiple entry points in the final few chapters where the author could easily have chosen an effective outcome. Obie's anger, Carter's violent jealousy, Janza's self-doubt before it all gets started, the black box, Leon's mysterious presence, and even Brother Jacques' cutting the power - any of these points could have lead to a more satisfactory resolution. But each of these points passed by quickly, as if the author were afraid to take up the task of resolving the story in favor of one group or another and instead simply let things peter out with no resolution, no epiphany, and indeed, no point in having read or written this story at all.
Don't get me wrong. I don't think that all novels need to follow cookie-cutter patterns, and I see nothing wrong with leaving some loose ends or some ambiguity about the characters' futures. But my final summary of this novel is that Robert Cormier had an idea one day and started writing about it, and then one day he kind of ran out of ideas, and at that point he stapled on the back cover and published the book. That's not post-modern or exploratory or playing with the medium of the novel - that's just bad writing. Not recommended.
Book Review: I despised this book and I don't care for Robert Cormier
Summary: 1 Stars
I would think that having some perspective on the world would help me to think more kindly on this book, but it doesn't. I read this book when I was in junior high school, a time when I should have been able to better relate to it. But I couldn't. The characters were flawed, yes, and that's fine, but I couldn't grasp anything redeemable about them either. Cormier's depiction of male teenage masturbation is something he seems a little too fond of, and is referenced several times throughout. Sure a young man's sexual awakening is an awkward and uncomfortable thing to address, but was it really necessary to address it that many times. Once is plenty. The Chocolate War isn't the only title that Cormier seems to favor referencing this as well and I also remember an interview that we read after having (unfortunately) read several of his other books, in which he said that in this title he had an entire chapter in which one of the characters masturbates and thinks a little bit. He decided to cut it out when he realized that it didn't help further the story along. This book also dealt with football. Now as I am not all that interested in sports or competition, it comes as no surprise that this was a book that was difficult for me to get through. But that is not to say that I wouldn't like it. Look at my review for Wait 'Til Next Year. That book was told in the language of baseball, and I loved it! But this book didn't win me over and neither did After the First Death. Robert Cormier is an author that I don't care for, and I honestly wonder if his books are geared towards young readers, or his way of working out some form of sexual repression for teenage boys.