The Chocolate War

The motif of violence and masculinity is closely tied to The Dynamics of Power and Control and The Turmoil of Adolescence. It appears in the first line of the novel to describe a hit on the football field—“They murdered him” (3)—and lurks beneath the surface in many of the daily interactions between the students. The setting at all-boys Trinity High School only exacerbates the students’ impression that brutality, posturing, and dominance are the ways to succeed, as even their teachers exert psychological aggression and control.

This motif is also evident in many of the boys’ misogynistic attitudes and anti-gay bias. Girls are mere objects, introduced early in the novel when Jerry “surreptitiously” looks at a photograph of an “impossibly beautiful” (17) girl in a magazine. And the distance that attending an all-boys high school has put between Jerry and real girls suggests that his expectations of them have indeed become impossible—when the real girl he calls on the phone uses the word “crap” she is ruined for him. She was perfect only from afar, an object to be admired like the girl in the magazine. Objectification merges with violence in one boy’s characterization of sexually ogling girls as “rape by eyeball” (134). This casual aggression and disregard for women who might assert their own opinions suggest real strength lies only in male sexual dominance; tellingly, it is only after Emile Janza baits Jerry by questioning his sexuality that he feels compelled to act out in violence.

Male violence—both on and off the football field—is often conflated with beauty, with Archie describing both the destruction of Room Nineteen and Emile’s bullying as “beautiful,” but the concept that violence, masculinity, and beauty are one thing in the boys’ minds is most strongly distilled in Jerry’s impressions from the football field: “There was exhilaration in the collision, the honest contact of football, not as beautiful maybe as a completed pass or a fake that threw your opponents off balance but beautiful nevertheless and manly, prideful” (179). The boys use this rule-based violence to prove they are men and to exert their power over one another. Even in the boxing match that Archie contrives—by needling both Emile and Jerry with the prospect of saving face and proving their manhood—some rules must be followed. At the start of the boxing match, Jerry thinks about what The Vigils and others who went along with their bullying did to him, what they did to Brother Eugene by destroying his classroom, “What guys like Archie and Janza did to the school. What they would do to the world when they left Trinity” (225). This suggests that the power of masculine violence is not only contained in the halls of the high school but also characterizes the world at large. The ensuing ugliness and chaos of the match demonstrate what happens when the most negative elements of masculine violence are allowed to run their course.

The word “beautiful” appears 53 times in the novel, or approximately once every five pages. The motif occasionally appears in moments of sincere admiration, but its random applications suggest a shallow appraisal of the things being admired, which range from many of the boys’ impressions of both girls and football plays to one student’s description of both his spit hitting a mailbox and Jerry’s simple refusal to sell the chocolates. Anything from the mundane to the spectacular can be “beautiful,” and this contributes to the impression that most of the novel’s characters never look too deeply beyond the surface of things or question their inherent value.

Ironically, the word “beautiful” is most often used by Archie, and always to describe something that is deeply ugly or disturbing. Emile Janza siphoning gas, The Goober’s nervousness Carter’s beating of Frankie Rollo at The Vigils’ meeting, the knowledge of how his assignments upset teachers: all are beautiful in Archie’s estimation. In a world where anything can be beautiful, the motif contributes to the moral ambiguity of the novel and the theme of The Turmoil of Adolescence. If the boys cannot even be sure of what is beautiful to them in life, they have little hope of assigning value or meaning to other, larger principles.

The motif of darkness is connected to other motifs and symbols from the novel, including the Chocolate Sale, the Black Box, and Violence. It appears in connection with Archie, whose constant “craving for chocolate” (12) suggests inner darkness and whose fear of the Black Box is a fear of losing control; with Brother Leon, whose dark clothes and robes convey a sense of “doom” or evil; and with Jerry’s physical beatings and his musings about his mother’s and his mortality.

The Goober’s observations about the Chocolate Sale and Trinity’s other traditions often include references to darkness, though he feels uncomfortable calling them “evil” aloud, thinking it is “a midnight word, a howling wind word” (151). The motif suggests that there are things students would rather keep in the dark, unseen, and unsaid. Significantly, the meetings of The Vigils are also held in a dark and windowless room.

Jerry’s willingness to face this darkness, to make “his way through the darkness to the window, and pull[..] back the drape” (114), is one of many things that sets him apart as he contemplates his mortality; the violent consequences of his challenges to authority are also closely connected to darkness, as Emile’s beating is “a final sheet of pain that drew a black curtain over his eyes” (203), and he finds himself surrounded in “wet darkness [... l]ike blood” (246) after the boxing match, which has been plunged into literal darkness by Brother Jacques. Jerry’s efforts to bring his individuality and the value of nonconformity to light are snuffed out by the prevailing darkness of conformity and tradition.

In the final lines of the novel, Cormier explicitly shows the students’ willingness to return to the status quo and stumble unquestioningly through the darkness after the brief illumination of the chocolate war: “The lights went off again. Archie and Obie sat there a while not saying anything and then made their way out of the place in the darkness” (253).