The Chocolate War: Post #1

For this term's R.O.A.R. (theme being Bildungs-Romans, or Coming-of-Age stories), I will be diving into Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War. Do not let the book's title fool you; I do not think chocolate will be involved. Or will it?

Summary pgs.1-38
We start off our story with average teenage boy Jerry Renault, trying out for his school's football team. Unfortunately, he was not very good, but despite the bruises and berating "words of encouragement" from his coach, he was determined to try again. His casual days of everyday life ended when he went to class the next day; he was chosen by Archie Costello, leader of a schoolyard gang dubbed "The Vigils", as a permanent accomplice to his deeds. The Vigils were not the type of "rainbow and lollipop" people, for they were quite crass, and force the members of the group to perform various misdeeds. On his first day of dirty work, Jerry was given his first assignment: the "chocolate assignment". It did not sound so "cruel", for it was just a simple chocolate bar-selling sale, similar to how Girl Scouts do it presumably. The next day, Archie discusses the big sale with a teacher at school, the ever-sarcastic and cynical Brother Leon, who declares that everyone must sell 20,00 boxes of chocolate. After a lengthy conversation, they both agree to spread the word across the entire student body.

Quotation Explanation
"Carter snapped his fingers again and tension quickly built up in the room once more. But a different kind of tension. Tension with teeth in it. For Archie. He braced himself" (Cormier 36).

My Reaction
Disregard the comment I made at the start of this post; chocolate will be involved in this story, and it will probably be more important than you think. Cormier's writing style is very entertaining in my opinion. Like the Quotation Explanation above, the clever juxtaposition of personification and similes made me more interested in pressing, or more appropriately, reading on for the rest of the book. The plot is very captivating as well, I cannot wait to read more. Fortunately, the author does not use declarative tone, meaning, he does not just report every event that happens throughout the story; sometimes he adds some commentary to the side. At some points, I even chuckled at some of the witty remarks of the narratives. The dialogue stuck out to me the most. It is amazing how I can imagine people in the real world, in this modern time, speaking like the characters in the book: common vocabulary and idioms, accents, and the like. As I continue this Bildungs-Roman, I will be looking for more of these polished touches.