#61- The Chocolate War By Robert Cormier

#61- The Chocolate War

Rating-6.5/10

Let me start off by saying how much I completely despise when authors end books with a vague answer. I hate having to come up with the ending for myself. If I wanted to create my own story I would have written my own book... and I didnt! 

For those reasons I marked this down additional points that it was getting when earlier in the book.

The Chocolate War is about a boy named Jerry Renault who goes to a religious all boys school. The school has a gang called The Vigils that everyone knows about but dont speak about openly (first rule of the fight club, you do not talk about the fight club). We enter the story right before the annual chocolate sales at school, this year the stakes are higher than ever. The headmaster is out on sick leave and Brother Leon is now in charge. He has doubled the amount of chocolate and the prices and each boy is expected to sell 50 boxes of chocolate. (which is completely crazy). At the first day of role call, when each boy is asked how many boxes they have sold, Jerry says no. That he will not sell this chocolate (its technically voluntary although everyone knows they have no choice). This starts an extreme shift of thought and Jerry is forced to make the decision, "Do I dare disturb the universe?"

The book started off somewhat slow, telling me, in my opinion, too much about secondary characters that dont matter that much. I felt like I knew each boys back story when I really didnt need to know them in order to solve the present issue about the chocolate. I loved the quote that they bring up though. Do I dare disturb the univserse. I took that quote and started to think about how I would apply it to my own life. I wonder if we all are disturbing the universe enough, most of the time I think that I am not. 

So if nothing else, this book kind of made me think more about standing up for certain things I believe in and making a more conscious effort to disturb my own universe. 

“Cities fell. Earth opened. Planets tilted. Stars plummeted. And the awful silence.”