The Chocolate War

When I am reading a book I tend to look at how this book makes me feel. I want a book to be engaging and fun to read, I don’t want it to have long dry spots where I am just skimming the book to get through it and not really reading it to understand it. Books should have an overall meaning to them that tells the young adults a moral, and not just written to be written. I also feel like young adult literature needs to be written for young adults. What I mean by this is that I feel like young adult literature needs to focus on things that young adults can relate to. Young adults can relate to being bullied in high school, or being picked on for being a little different, but most young adults cannot relate to heavier issues like murder or jail time.

As a future teacher, I really think that the books that young adults read in high school should deal with high school problems. I feel like some of the students need a novel that they can relate to and that they can see that things will work out for them.   I also think that these books need to face the issues that teens are dealing with in today’s society. I don’t feel like a novel that is talking about how a girl’s hair is messed up is an appropriate subject to talk about. Teens in today’s society are dealing with abuse, drugs, and pregnancies, and they need to read something that shows them that it will all work out in the end. For a realism novel I think that it should present things that happen in the real world at that time period. I feel like a realism novel should show young adults the realistic repercussions to their actions, and not sugar coat them.

I don’t think that The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier does a good enough job with showing young adults that everything is going to be okay. This novel is doing the opposite of that. It is showing us that if we defy the “Universe” then we are going to get the crap beat out of us. I think this novel is a good one to read up until the end because it shows how determined Jerry is to do what he feels is right. He is sticking with the decision that he made no matter what anyone says. That is a good moral for young adults. But when he gets beat up, the readers will not want to stick to their decisions because they will not want to get the crap beat out of them just for doing something that they want to do.  

The one realistic thing that I think this book encompasses is its description of people in general. I feel like though this book doesn’t have a good ending, it does tell the readers something about life.  In the conversation between Archie and Carter in the end of the novel, Archie tells Carter, “You see, Carter, people are two things: greedy and cruel. So we have a perfect set up here. The greed part—a kid pas a buck for a chance to win a hundred. Plus fifty boxes of chocolate. The cruel part—watching two guys hitting each other, maybe hurting each other, while they’re safe in the bleachers. That’s why it works, Carter, because we’re all bastards.” I feel like this part in the book shows the reader what it’s like in the real world. It shows young adults that the real world is tough, and you need to be prepared.

Overall I think that this book was a pretty good book when talking about the realism genre. I do not however, think that this book has a good moral ending. I feel like Archie and Brother Leon should have had some repercussions for the wrongs that they inflicted on Jerry and the rest of the school.