Chocolate War -- Do I

¶ … Chocolate War -- Do I Dare Disturb the Universe?

The Chocolate War (1974) by Robert Cormier takes an apparently ordinary decision in the life of a high school freshman and turns this decision into a high-stakes battle for the boy's soul. When Jerry Renault refuses to sell chocolate as part of his high school's traditional fundraising activities, he commits an act of social defiance that chances his life forever. He emerges from his struggle physically bloodied but spiritually and emotionally matured. At the beginning of the book, Renault is a quiet, unassuming boy, quite different in personality than the Vigils, led by Archie Costello, who dominate the school. However, through his initially unconscious act of social defiance, Renault learns what it means to truly disturb the universe, even in an apparently ordinary school, and realizes he has deep reserves of strength.

At the beginning of the year at Trinity Academy, a conservative preparatory parochial school, Jerry Renault resolves to make his life different than it has been before. He hangs a poster in his locker emblazoned with the quotation: 'Do I dare to disturb the universe?" In his locker. (129) at first, he is uncertain of the quotation's meaning, and merely does so because everyone else at Trinity hangs a poster in his locker. A quiet conformist by nature, Jerry simply goes along with the flow, but this choice of poster becomes prophetic, and Jerry eventually adopts it as his creed -- he will disturb the universe at Trinity, and he will do so through chocolate.

Of course, even before the chocolate sale debacle, Jerry cannot help but stand out from his peers, in terms of his family situation. His mother has just died, and his father cannot give the boy the necessary comfort and emotional sustenance to weather her death. Starting the year anew, in a different school setting, Renault resolves to forge ahead as best he can, even though he must now shoulder adult responsibilities when his father cannot stand up for his son. This aspect of Jerry's life is significant because it explains his constant sense of loneliness and also why his father does not intervene when the boy starts being harassed by his fellow students and the brothers of the school. Jerry's home situation means that the boy begins the year torn by the internal conflict that life does not always evolve as a young man expects. Jerry cannot rely upon his parents, for different reasons anymore, so he must rely upon himself.

As soon as he enters Trinity, Jerry is confronted with another conflict. In defiance of social expectations, filled with a new sense of his own maturity, he does not conform to the pressures of the school and bow in deference to the authorities' demand that he sell chocolate to make money for the school. Jerry does not take his anti-chocolate stance as an overt act of rebellion, but it becomes one, and he refuses to acquiesce once his right to make his own decisions is established before the rest of the students. Jerry's self-determination and self-reliance becomes a new, manifest part of his character that the boy was unaware of, in the past. While other students succumb to pressure of the administration and the student Vigils, Jerry does not. "I've got guts," he says at the beginning the novel, as he weathers through aid difficult sports tryout for football. Thinking of his father, he defies even the coach's remark that he is too puny to play. Jerry must overcome his own sense of powerlessness, and the sickness that overtakes his body after being buffeted from all sides. Emotionally and physically, although he may appear weak, Jerry has inner resources of steel that he discovers when he is, literally and figuratively, down for the count and up against the ropes like a fighter.

Later in the novel, when Jerry continues to ignore Brother Leon's command to sell chocolate, Jerry is told that he has 'guts' again. He experiences the profound realization that his nonconformist stance has empowered other boys, who hated the domination of the school authorities and the Vigils whose abuses the brothers tolerate because they enforce the administration's will and discipline. "I never thought of saying no. Just like you did," marvels an older boy. (125) "We have tradition on our side. The chocolate sale is an annual event. The boys have come to expect it," says the brother sanctimoniously at the beginning of the year. In reality, the chocolate sale, like all enforced traditions, has become an instrument of control of the brothers over the boys. If one boy flaunts school discipline and suggests that the other boys need not obey the brother's every whim, the system will begin to crack. Jerry's decision not to sell occurred on the spur of the moment, partly in ignorance of school traditions, but he realizes he has more power as an individual than he ever knew.