The Forever War
Posted by Review-a-Day, January 17, 2009 12:00 am 5 Comments Filed under: Review-a-Day. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
Reviewed by Chris Bolton
Powells.com
It's always risky to revisit a childhood favorite. Your once-favorite movie that ran every afternoon on HBO is likely to turn out, in adulthood, to be horribly written, abysmally acted, and in general, an embarrassment (I'm looking at you, Goonies). Let's not touch music and fashions. Even books can age poorly, or turn out to be not quite the towering achievement you remember them to be.
Robert Cormier's young adult classic The Chocolate War was published the year I was born. I read it in my early teens, when I was only beginning to resent authority and struggling to find my own voice, and it connected with me in a way I can only describe as profound; I spent many of my teen years wishing my school had a chocolate sale just so I could rebel against it.
Approaching it again after so many years, I wondered how relevant its themes, characters, and details could be to me. Would it seem like an interesting time capsule of a bygone period, or simply overwrought adolescent angst? It has certainly been the case more than once that what felt so "authentic" and "real" to me as a teenager has turned out to be pretty damn cheesy with a little adulthood under my belt.
Fortunately, The Chocolate War didn't disappoint. In some ways, in fact, it was better than I recalled.
The aspect of the book that I focused on most intensely the first time — Jerry Renault, standing alone against the school even when there's no earthly reason to — remained just as strong. But all these years later, I noticed the many other well-drawn characters, specifically the way Cormier depicts their own weaknesses and fears, so that even the notorious Archie Costello feels not so very different from Jerry.
The novel is set at Trinity, a private high school whose continued survival depends heavily on the money from its annual chocolate sale. Each year the students are allotted a certain number of boxes to sell — although, it is stressed in a way that feels familiarly sincere and deceptive at the same time, the sale is entirely voluntary and no student has to participate. The Assistant Headmaster, Brother Leon, seems particularly gung-ho about this year's sale, pushing twice the usual quota, leading to speculation that Leon is using the sales to assure his promotion to Headmaster (other theories include the notion that Leon has done something shady with school funds and is using the sale to cover it up).
Trinity is also ruled by a shadowy student organization called The Vigils. The group — which is never mentioned by name, even by the faculty — hands out seemingly random assignments to students, along the lines of unscrewing all the desks and chairs in a classroom. In general, these pranks, dreamed up by Archie Costello, who is loathed by his fellow Vigils even as they admire his ingenuity, are considered perfectly harmless — unless you happen to be a victim. (Sometimes it's tough to determine who's the greater victim: the target of the assignment or the student who's forced to carry it out.)
Enter Jerry Renault, a freshman whose mother recently died and whose father is disappearing into a waking death, working all day at his menial job and coming home to sleep his life away on the couch. (Jerry's resentment of his father's wasted life of punching a clock and sleeping until the next work day will perhaps resonate a little too closely with some adult readers. And maybe that's a good thing.)
As Jerry struggles on the football team, attempts to make contact with the cute girl at his bus stop who smiles at him but never says much, and wrestles with his own sense of identity, he's given his first assignment by The Vigils: refuse to sell the chocolates. Naturally, this puts him in direct conflict with Brother Leon, who can't force him to sell the chocolates, but certainly isn't happy about his lack of participation. As the sale drags on and the tension mounts from the faculty and student body alike, Jerry's resentment toward all authority figures — even covert ones like The Vigils — leads him to make a fateful decision and stand up for himself against everyone.
The Chocolate War is number three on the American Library Association's list of the 100 most banned/challenged books — it even beat the gay penguins! — proving that the story retains its dangerous edge after these many years. As Bush and his cronies slink back to their caves and the country is poised for a slow, difficult, yet inevitable renewal with the Obama administration, the story feels almost too timely — how many brave individuals in the past eight years have fought to take a stand against the corruption of our leaders, even when the tide of patriotic fervor and intimidating rhetoric pounded against them?
(In fairness, the book also has a tremendous number of references to masturbation, which might offend those who were never teenage boys, or have forgotten what it's like to be one. It does, however, indicate that adolescent boys haven't really changed all that much between 1974 and 2009.)
In not only his rebellion but also the futility of his actions, Jerry's story reminded me in many ways of Cool Hand Luke, though Cormier makes Jerry into less of a Christ-like figure. It's easy to cheer for him, never more so than in the novel's brutal and riveting climax, and inevitably the reader will wonder what s/he might have done in Jerry's situation. This aspect made him readily identifiable to me as a teenager, and is every bit as effective in adulthood. I also found myself thinking of Archie Costello, no less credible and fascinating a character in his ruthlessness and cowardice, and wondering what cabinet position he might have held in the Bush White House.
The Chocolate War doesn't offer easy lessons or a tidy resolution. Cormier has no desire to delude his readership into thinking that standing up for oneself doesn't have consequences. In fact, he seems to be saying, the punishment is often dire, the compensation minimal, and the only thing you can count on is more hardship. Rereading the book in adulthood, this message resonates most truthfully and powerfully: in the end, being true to yourself is its own reward — and, often, the only reward.
Perhaps that is the scariest notion of all, and the element that makes The Chocolate War so threatening to those who would censor it. It is also, ultimately, what makes the book truly timeless.
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Chris Bolton's days are spent providing images and content for Powells.com. When night falls, he writes the web-comic Smash with his artist brother, Kyle. He wrote and directed a web-series called Wage Slaves, which is in post-production, and his short story set in Powell's City of Books will appear this summer in Portland Noir from Akashic Press.
Books mentioned in this post
This review was disappointing and annoying. I do not want to hear your personal political views in a review about a book that has NOTHING to do with politics.
I think that it was totally unnecessary for you to bring your sweeping condemnation of the Bush administration and your glowing , gushing support of Obama into this review.
I realize that this is a blog that originates from a business that is located in a liberal city and state but this newsletter reaches a large audience and there are some who might find your words offensive. Bush does have a %34 approval rating.
Thats admittedly a very low number, but still adds up to millions of people.
And while I know that I'm likely in the minority and have nothing against him personally, I am weary of Obama being inserted into any and every conversation these days, no matter what the content.
Obama mania is simply starting to wear on some of us.
Enough , already.
Please.
A fine review by Chris Bolton. Bolton comes close to identifying what being a teenager means, for the most part: being a slave to sexual urges and needing desperately to try on power and effectiveness.
Consider that even before we had formal schooling, evidence (through many of our best known authors of the late 18th through early 20th centuries), the obsessions of the young turned around trying out their muscles and their inventiveness. With the ubiquitous yoke of schooling, opportunities to investigate and exercise these feelings of effectiveness have been criminalized. "Effectiveness" has been co-opted by schooling to getting good grades or being a star on the football team.
That said, one who is able to express the difficult push-pull and moral awakenings of the teen years is laudable. I'm glad to hear of this book, and to read some of the earlier reactions to it here on Powell's.
Chris—Great review. Thank you for taking the risk to revisit this childhood favorite. Reading your review brought back memories of how important this book was to me growing up, and rekindled a certain rebelliousness that I felt at the time.
Allison, I respect your opinion and appreciate your feedback.
It should be noted, however, that in the 30th anniversary edition of The Chocolate War, which is the copy I read, Cormier adds an Afterword explaining much of what inspired him to write the book — and a lot of it was political. It's no accident that the novel came out — and was a huge success — right after the Watergate scandal.
I believe that, unfortunately, the lessons from Watergate about the corruption of authority and abuse of power are even more relevant in the aftermath of the Bush years. And since the review reflects my opinion, that's what I wrote about.
I loved this book when it was required reading in my English Lit class. That was when I was a University student back in 1983. Bolton hits the nail right on the head with this review. I'm going to read it again, just because I enjoyed it so much. I recommeded it to my then, high school aged brothers. They enjoyed it as well.