In the winter 1980 issue of Top of the News Norma Bagnall describes The Chocolate War as a hopeless novel about the forced sale of candy in a boys' parochial high school [see excerpt above]. She considers it an unrealistic picture of adolescent life and unsuitable reading material for teenagers. We think her description is inaccurate and her criticism unwarranted. Cormier's novel is only superficially about the fund-raising activities at a Catholic institution; its greater concerns are with th...

The book that we have chosen as an example of the best of modern realism for young adults is Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War (1974). It contains the kind of realism that many other books had been just leading up to. Its message about conformity and human manipulation is all the more powerful because the young protagonist is so vulnerable. (p. 186) In selecting The Chocolate War as a touchstone example, we asked ourselves several questions about the book. These same or similar questions could be as...

The big book of this YA autumn is clearly—and justifiably—Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War…. Too many young adult novels only promise an outspoken revelation of the relevant. The Chocolate War delivers the goods. The goods in the story are 20,000 boxes of chocolates that a depraved teaching brother means for the students of a tottering parochial school to sell. Sweet charity is the mask for Brother Leon's sharp and shady fund-raising. Since nothing is petty to the instit...

There is a striking similarity between the end of Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War and the end of William Shakespeare's Hamlet. In both works the hero gives a final message to his closest friend, one whose suffering has been chiefly that of a spectator. (p. 217) Like Shakespeare's play, The Chocolate War is concerned with putting things right in a world gone rotten. Jerry's story of standing out for conscience is carefully, convincingly built, and if its obsessive concern with ...

In two justly admired novels, "The Chocolate War" and "I Am the Cheese," Robert Cormier has dealt with the betrayal of youth, creating landscapes familiar but unnervingly strange—as in a di Chirico painting—in which one sees a boy in mid-adolescence, exceptionally decent and sensitive, standing alone as invisible forces gather against him. The betrayals themselves, perpetrated by the elders who were by nature designed to be the boy's strength and support, are...

[The Chocolate War] will surely be one of those books that sweep through teenage readers with the fervent interest that Catcher in the Rye roused in its day…. I've … spoken to adult readers whom it worries…. Their charge against it has nothing to do with the book's compulsion. On the contrary. They say it is too attractive, too compelling, too persuasive. They say that such a hopeless ending—hopeless, not (colloquially) unsuccessful—should not be presented to...

In two justly admired novels, "The Chocolate War" and "I Am the Cheese," Robert Cormier has dealt with the betrayal of youth, creating landscapes familiar but unnervingly strange—as in a di Chirico painting—in which one sees a boy in mid-adolescence, exceptionally decent and sensitive, standing alone as invisible forces gather against him. The betrayals themselves, perpetrated by the elders who were by nature designed to be the boy's strength and support, are...

["The Chocolate War"], written for teen-agers but a strong read for adults, is a story with a highly serious message not only about the usurpation and misuse of power but about power's inevitable staying. "The Chocolate War" is masterfully structured and rich in theme; the action is well crafted, well timed, suspenseful; complex ideas develop and unfold with clarity. The novel may be faulted only for its general short-changing of character. The characters are quick studies...

The Chocolate War, a brutal, forthright study in violence, ends in doubt—one might say, in an inglorious draw. Presumably the author was not evading an ending but honestly intended to suggest that no decision between Good and Evil was really possible. Extreme as his picture is, it can only too readily be believed…. Brother Leon's actions, seem entirely from the point of view of his pupils, are never truly motivated; he is, ultimately, a Bogyman, an embodiment of Evil who is, perhaps, on...

Set against the background of a prestige American school, [The Chocolate War] explores the theme of corruption on various levels—the corruption of the adolescent through fear and group pressure, the corruption of those in authority who betray their ideals, ultimately the corruption of all institutions because of human weakness. The narrative is powerful and compelling, and Robert Cormier's portrayal of the psychology of a wide range of characters … is very impressive. Both language and ...