The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier

I spent the end of last semester trying to think up literature themes for independent study courses. One of the themes I like to kick around is censorship. There's a lot of good discussion fodder there and an a potential way to involve the civics class. (there's a large push to run cross curricular projects lately) Also, for the most part, high school students love the idea of doing something "forbidden". 

The American Library Association keeps statistics on challenged literature. It's an interesting browse, particularly if you investigate the sidebar links, but I find that I'm familiar with most of the literature. Mostly, people challenge books on the basis of nudity or sexual content. I get it, but I think it's ridiculous. Sex is a part of life, if it weren't we wouldn't have much of a population base. I'd rather deal with it head on than create some sort of mysterious taboo about it. As previously noted, if you really want to get a teenager to do something, tell them it's forbidden or better yet, tell them it's taboo to even talk about it.

What gets really interesting to me is when the lists of challenged lit intersect with the canonical high school reading lists. The Chocolate War is one such intersection. It is usually challenged on the grounds of sexual language. The story is set on the campus of Trinity, a boy's catholic school. So no actual sex going on here. However, since the main characters are all teenage boys, Cormier has them thinking and talking, sometimes a little crudely, about sex and girls. I'm not sure how necessary it was, but it certainly wasn't shocking and did set the mindset and maturity levels for the characters. So banned for sexual content, really?

If I were going to challenge the book it would be for thematic reasons. There are a lot of similarities between The Chocolate War and Lord of the Flies. Both books left me feeling alienated and depressed. However, in Lord of the Flies there is at least the unusual and extreme situation of a group of boys being stranded alone on an empty island. There is no such pressure on the boys of The Chocolate War which seems to imply that this level of mass cruelty needs no cause. Maybe it's depressing because on some level I think it's true. Or maybe, it's because the adults were so ineffectual. I'm not sure. But I do know, the sexual language didn't really bother me.

There is an argument to be made that any book that can affect you deeply is a good book. So according to that metric The Chocolate War is a good book. I felt edgy and anxious for about 24 hours after finishing it. I will never willingly read this book again. It affected me, deeply. As a teacher, I can see reasons for teaching this. The main characters are age appropriate to a high school student. It describes a world that is at least partly familiar to them: bullies, cliques, sports teams, good and bad teachers. Thematically, there's a lot to talk about: social politics, manipulative leaders, secret societies, avarice and ambition. The ethics alone are interesting to talk about. At the same time, I wonder how many teachers really did the analysis necessary to make this worth reading in a class.