The Chocolate War

Robert Cormier's novel The Chocolate War is set in the early 1970s at Trinity, a private boys high school run by Catholic Brothers. The school is located in a New England city but the specific location is not named. The story centers around a secret society of students known as the Vigils and their efforts to run the school from behind the scenes. The Vigils think of themselves as maintaining order and exercise their power by forcing students to undertake elaborate pranks that range from relatively harmless to destructive. The pranks and the maintenance of order are not the main point of the Vigils. Instead it is the assertion of control over other people -- the exercise of power for its own sake -- that motivates Archie Costello who designs the pranks. He is matched in his love of power by the teacher, Brother Leon, whose sadism is less subtle than Archie's pleasure in manipulation. The title of the novel is taken from the central conflict in the book in which Brother Leon, as the acting head of the school, needs to convince Archie, as the leader of the Vigils, to help him in getting the students to sell double their previous year's quota of chocolates.

The simple story is meant as an analogy with the rise of tyrannical leaders in societies. The world of the school is a microcosm of the greater world. The sale of chocolates is important to Brother Leon because he has risked his career and the school's money on a more ambitious fundraising drive than the school usu

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