The Chocolate War (1-54)

Summary

In the book The Chocolate War the book begins with a strong sentence that makes you want to read more of it. It starts off with Jerry Renault being beaten when he is at football tryouts. The coach is impressed with him because he took the beaten, so he comes up to him the next day and askes him back. Then Jerry is so surprised he becomes ill and starts to throw-up in the bathroom, but as he is ill he dreams of making the team. The way the book descibes Obie from Cormier point of view is that he is boring, disgusting, and the thing that tops it off is that he is disgusted with a charcter named Archie Costello. Obie hates arguing with Archie because he always win because of his way of words and brillance. During this Archie is trying to figure out what ten kids he is going to use in his next assignment and Obie is taking notes. Then Obie thinks that Jerry shouldn't get an assignment because his mom just died, but Archie thinks it is apporpriate to give him the assignment now. Archie tells Obie to put his name down for the "chocolates". Archie and Brother Leon is having a conversation about the chocolate sale and he says that the school needs to make 20,000 boxes. Archie doesn't know why Brother Leon has called him to talk about it. Brother Leon is described as a sarcastic and powerful-hungry; for making fun of kids for not particular reason. Then later Goubert a.k.a known as The Goober receives an order to attend a Vigils meeting to get his assignment. His assignment is to sneak into Brother Leon's room after school and unscrew everything such as his desks, handles, chairs, and doors. He has to unscrew them until they are barely in the hole, so when the students come and sit down they would fall. After that Archie has to face the Black Box. The Black Box is a mechanism to keep the leader of the Vigils in check. In the box there is five white marbles and one black one. If he draws the black one he has to do the assignment himself. In three years Archie never drew a black marble, so of course he takes out a white marble and Boober has to do the assignment. In class Leon picks on a kid name Bailey. Bailey is really smart and Leon thinks he is cheating and he says he have never cheated before. Now Emile Janza is a school thug, and even though Archie he ends up working with Emile. Now Goober he has been in Brother Eugene room and he been unscrewing for about six hours and he is no where near done. So two people in masks comes help him finish the job. As a result it took nine hours to finish. Jerry is there sitting and remembering his moms illness and her death. Him and his father basically grew apart, but on the day on his mom funneral they shared their emotions. The chocolate sale begins at school.


Quote
"Was life that dull, that boring and humdrum for people? He hated to think of his own life stretching ahead of him that way, a long succession of days and nights that were fine, fine—not good, not bad, not great, not lousy, not exciting, not anything( Cormier 51)." This quote introduces Jerry's father. Ever since his mom died his father really have no feeling on life. He thinks everything is fine and it really isn't. Jerry's father is an example of a person who doesn't and will not disturb the universe. Jerry thinks that his father is less of a human and plus he have mixed emotions that he doesn't know how to deal with them.


Reaction
At first as I started to read the book I found it very interesting. Robert Cormier writing is way different then many other books that i have read. As I was reading the book I found it confusing at first then as I started to read more it all started to click. To me his writing skills is funny, but then serious. It is like a reality that just hits you in the face. Overall I'm happy that I chose this book because I think I'm going to love this book.