One of my favorite parts about being a Secondary Education (English and Com Arts) major is the classes I get to take. And this semester this is particularly true. I have the great opportunity to take a course centered around Young Adult literature and discuss how I can implement the works we read in my own future classroom. How cool is that?!
We have read three books so far (wow!) and I will certainly be writing reviews of each title, but I finished this particular work of Young Adult literature last night so it's fresh. And said book (if you ignored the title for some reason) is The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier.
To be honest, I had never heard of this book before seeing it on the syllabus and I really didn't know what it was going to be about. And that uncertain feeling about the plot continued for a solid three chapters. The book opens with a graphic metaphor comparing being tackled in football to being murdered, a hook for a specific group of people, that's for sure. If I had stopped reading after the first page I would have been convinced the book was about young adults being mauled.
But because it was an assigned reading, and a critically acclaimed book, I pushed onwards and was pleasantly surprised with the content of the book. The novel follows a variety of characters during roughly half a year (I think) of their time at Trinity--a private Christian all-boys high school. And the centerpiece of this time is a chocolate sale organized by the worst educator ever to be conceptualized, Brother Leon.
Essentially, Brother Leon ordered double the amount of chocolates he knew the students could sell and doubled the selling price all while ordering the leader of a ~mysterious~ student group called The Vigils to help him or else. Said leader is Archie, who is also, in my opinion, the worst. I'm still not completely clear on what exactly The Vigils purpose is at Trinity, but I think it's just an archaic group of boys intimidating and stressing out non-members through cruel "assignments" (unscrewing all the screws in a classroom, refusing things, etc).
One of the targeted subjects of The Vigils is Jerry Renault, but when he continues an assignment past its "due date"--I won't specify the assignment in case you want to read the book--all-out pandemonium ensues and chocolate sales fluctuate.
The book ends with one of the wildest scenes I have ever read. Think Lord of the Flies meets Jump In (the critically acclaimed D-Com starring Corbin Bleu). My mouth was, honestly, hanging open as I read the final few chapters and I had to take a second to digest what I had just read.
As innocuous as this book review is, I still enjoyed this book and am glad that I read it all the way through. I'm not sure if it's a "must-read" for every person walking this earth, but if you're into angsty teens struggling with social-dichotomies and conformity, this book is for you.
A solid 9.5/10 recommend.
