The Chocolate War

The Chocolate War

Robert Cormier

Robert Cormier began his writing career as a journalist. He does not see himself as a thematic writer, but as a storyteller. Now he lives in Leominster, Massachusetts.

The book tells the story of the first few month of a young boy, Jerry Renault, in his new Catholic High school called Trinity in a small American town.

Jerry entered school in fall and tried very hard to become the quarterback of the high school team. He did quite well in school too, but had one teacher he didn't like, this was Brother Leon. Unfortunately the headmaster of the Trinity High school got sick and Brother Leon was in charge of it. Since all private schools in the USA are only supported by the tuition, the students have to pay. They are all in financial troubles and have to find different ways to raise money. It was tradition at Trinity that all students sold chocolate boxes, the profit of this sale went to the school. Last year they sold ten thousand boxes for 1$ each, but this year Brother Leon wanted to increase the sale. He bought twenty thousand chocolate boxes that should be sold for 2$ each. There were approximately 400 students at Trinity, so every student had to sell 50 boxes.

In the school there existed a secret student society called The Vigils. The president's name was Carter, but the boy who really organised the group was Archie Costello. They picked some new students of the school and gave them assignments which had to be carried out secretly. When they were given by Archie, a black box was brought. It contained 5 white and 1 black marble. Archie had to take out a marble; if it was white, the freshman had to carry out the assignment. If it was the black one, Archie had to do it. Jerry's friend called The Goober got the assignment to loosen all the screws in Brother Eugene's classroom. The next morning all chairs, tables and the blackboard collapsed, Brother Eugene got a nervous breakdown. He accused Archie for being behind all this, which he denied.

Now the chocolate box sale began and one boy kept record of the sale. Every day the students were asked what they had sold. Everyone did at least 5 or 10, but Jerry refused to sell. Soon Brother Leon got angry and asked The Vigils for help. But Goober knew, that not to sell the chocolate was already an assignment given to Jerry by Archie. After the assignment was over, he did not sell a single box and got something like a hero. Now The Vigils ordered Jerry to sell, but he didn't. So The Vigils started to terrorise him, but Jerry kept his decision.

A few weeks later the sale was over. Every single box of chocolate was sold except the 50 of Jerry. Archie asked all students to come to the athletic field to help Jerry selling his boxes. He told Jerry to come, because he should get even with Janza, a boy that had beaten him up once. He should settle this matter with boxing gloves in the ring. The next afternoon all students were there; they could buy a ticket for 50¢ where they could write who should punch the other one, and how. Carter pulled the first ticket: Renault should hit Janza to the jaw, but the smash wasn't very hard. On the next ticket Janza should hit Jerry, who went nearly to the floor and the next time Jerry hit Janza hard ,too. Next time Janza had to do a forbidden hit. Jerry defended himself and a real fight began. Janza beated up Jerry badly and the students called an ambulance for him.

Brother Leon, who watched the fight from a distance, came into the room where Brother Jacques yelled at Archie about the violence and that he had started it. Brother Leon walked towards Archie and said: "You did not really use your best judgement tonight, but I realised that you did it for the school". In the distance the siren of the ambulance was heard.

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