ABAW: The Chocolate War by Richard Cormier

Fair warning: I give away the ending in this one.

The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

Originally published in 1974, this is the story of hazing and bullying at a small private boys’ school. A secret society at the school, called The Vigils, controls the school through Assignments, which include ridiculous pranks as well as devastating assaults. The ostensible leader of The Vigils is their Assigner, the charismatic and manipulative Archie Costello. During the school’s annual chocolate sale, Archie instructs freshman Jerry Renault to not participate in the sale for ten days. Jerry’s refusal incites a general apathy toward the sale by the other boys until the wrath of the interim school leader, Brother Leon, gets The Vigils involved in rescuing the sale. Jerry’s determined refusal to not participate in the sale then leads the other boys to isolate, harass, torment, and beat him up. For the climax, Archie convinces Jerry that he can save face by facing one of his abusers in a boxing match in which raffle tickets purchased by students will determine the exchange of blows. A mob scene reminiscent of the the frothing mob fury of The Lord of the Flies erupts until Jerry is savagely beaten. Though Archie is reprimanded by one teacher, Brother Leon rescues him from any consequences. 

The book illustrates the dangers of a closed group and of secrecy in small isolated societies. The Vigils gain too much power with too little thought about the consequences of any of their pranks on anyone but themselves. Jerry is a thoughtful and sympathetic character who has lost his mother to cancer. He keeps a poster in his locker with a line from Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” “Do I dare disturb the universe?” He dares, but he pays for that daring.

At several points in the story, I felt hopeful that the villain here, Archie, would get his just desserts, but that hope is crushed each time. The pacing of the story, especially in the final scene, kept me off-kilter like the characters, surprised by each turn of the action, and shocked and sickened by the conclusion and by hopes repeatedly dashed. Archie walks away, unbeaten and unchanged, while Jerry, who I cheered for, is left broken in both body and spirit, wanting to give them anything they want, to do whatever they ask.

The highlight - though a dark one - in terms of the writing, can be found in the series of scenes in which Jerry is isolated by the school. Once he continues to refuse to sell the chocolates against the orders of The Vigils, the Vigils turn on him. With them, the rest of the school turns. The sequences of small actions add up: sinister phone calls in the night, random hits and shoves on the football field, his teammates intentionally dropping passes, assignments going missing from his classes, people looking through him then sneering at him. It’s a horrifying portrayal of the way a group of people can isolate someone, how an entire crowd can be guilty of bullying, and how a single charismatic personality can orchestrate the behavior and emotions of a large number of people.