The Chocolate War

Author: Robert Cormier
Published: 2004, Knopf (this version)
272 pages

Originally published in 1974, this book established Cormier’s strong footing in the YA market.  A lot of people are really crazy about this book, but I found myself slightly unimpressed with it.  It is certainly an entertaining read (I got through it in a matter of hours), but I just can’t relate to it as much as I can relate to other YA books that I’ve read.

The book is about a kid named Jerry Renault taking on The Vigils — a secret society that rules his elite boys’ prep school.  Jerry asks himself throughout the novel “Do I dare disturb the universe?” and he ends up disturbing at least his school’s universe when he rebels against The Vigils, with disastrous results.

Cormier raises some interesting questions about human nature, and the reason many reviewers have loved this book is because of his “uncompromising portrait of human cruelty” (School Library Journal) or his “good sense for the realistic” (Bestsellers).  I, on the other hand, think the portrait Cormier paints is so overwhelmingly negative and harsh that it becomes unbelievable.  There are many villains in the novel, and none of them have the redeeming qualities that would make them human.  Maybe I’m just lucky, but I’ve never met anybody as “bad” as Brother Leon or Archie, the two main villains Cormier creates.

The Chocolate War is nonetheless worth a read because a) it’s a classic, b) it’s entertaining, and c) maybe you’ll feel lucky for never having met anybody like Cormier’s villains (Come on, your ex-boyfriend really isn’t that bad).