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From: Dean Schneider <schneiderd>
Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 22:28:56 -0500
Another quotation from Patty Campbell's Presenting Robert Cormier:
"But could it have turned out differently?...If others had joined Jerry....There are a number of places in the story where this might have happened. The Goober, of course, is often on the verge of acting on his friendship with Jerry, but in the end, like Hamlet, he only thinks, and doesn't act until too late. For a moment he even hopes that it will all end in a stalemate. The Goober speaks for all the others in wanting to avoid confrontation at all costs. Obie might have acted on his disgust for Archie:
"I owe you one for that!" he thinks when pushed too far. In the end he settles only for hoping that fate will punish Archie with a black marble. Carter, too, might have used his simple strength to end it.
"Any of these isolated actions might have started the group movement that would have saved Jerry and defeated Leon and the Vigils."
I have yet to teach The Chocolate War, seeing it as more of a book for high school, and I teach 8th grade, but this is how I would approach the novel: tracing where opposition to evil might have happened and been successful. It would make a great novel to teach as part of a Holocaust unit, to come from Nazi Germany into an American high school and study group behavior and tyranny, and the difficulties and possibilities of resistance.
My 14-year-old son, who posted yesterday, is a big fan of Cormier and has read just about everything Cormier wrote, including the forthcoming The Rag and Bone Shop, which we both liked a lot. There's something about Cormier's accessible style and difficult themes that appeals to a good, adolescent reader (and to me, an older reader).
Dean Schneider Ensworth School Nashville, Tennessee schneiderd at ensworth.com
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Received on Wed 22 Aug 2001 10:28:56 PM CDT
Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 22:28:56 -0500
Another quotation from Patty Campbell's Presenting Robert Cormier:
"But could it have turned out differently?...If others had joined Jerry....There are a number of places in the story where this might have happened. The Goober, of course, is often on the verge of acting on his friendship with Jerry, but in the end, like Hamlet, he only thinks, and doesn't act until too late. For a moment he even hopes that it will all end in a stalemate. The Goober speaks for all the others in wanting to avoid confrontation at all costs. Obie might have acted on his disgust for Archie:
"I owe you one for that!" he thinks when pushed too far. In the end he settles only for hoping that fate will punish Archie with a black marble. Carter, too, might have used his simple strength to end it.
"Any of these isolated actions might have started the group movement that would have saved Jerry and defeated Leon and the Vigils."
I have yet to teach The Chocolate War, seeing it as more of a book for high school, and I teach 8th grade, but this is how I would approach the novel: tracing where opposition to evil might have happened and been successful. It would make a great novel to teach as part of a Holocaust unit, to come from Nazi Germany into an American high school and study group behavior and tyranny, and the difficulties and possibilities of resistance.
My 14-year-old son, who posted yesterday, is a big fan of Cormier and has read just about everything Cormier wrote, including the forthcoming The Rag and Bone Shop, which we both liked a lot. There's something about Cormier's accessible style and difficult themes that appeals to a good, adolescent reader (and to me, an older reader).
Dean Schneider Ensworth School Nashville, Tennessee schneiderd at ensworth.com
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Received on Wed 22 Aug 2001 10:28:56 PM CDT
