It CaseEssay Preview: It CaseReport this essayThe book is about a high school fundraising candy sale in a Catholic, boyshigh school in the Massacusetts. Robert Cormier, the author, pulls nopunches about how cruel and deceitful adolescents can be. Moreover,the many of the teachers in the school are portrayed as manipulative andpower-tripping. My recollection is that there are few violent scenes, butthat they are very descriptive and powerfully written.Cormier is an interesting author. He often sets his books in high schoolsand his protagonists are usually in the teen range, but his handling of thematerial and strong prose style makes him very much an adult author. Manyof his stories come around to the point of view that we adults dont treatteens very well, and the world as a whole is not a very nice place. Thereis a strong back list, much of it still in print in paperback, I suppose.However, The Chocolate war is not a simple film about fighting the powers that be. The protagonist actually has little to say about his own action: hes so opaque that it seems even He doesnt know exactly what he is rebelling against, just that he cant give up. He doesnt really know what hes doing, and as his life is made more and more awful by Archie and Brother Leon, it becomes increasingly clear he doesnt enjoy it either. He simply feels compelled to, and stoically refuses to give in, despite the obvious pointlessness of his rebellion and the cruel consequences that ensue. But this makes for a very hard hero to identify with and rootfor.
In fact, most of the film revolves around Archie and his attempt to break Renaults will. Archie is very talkative, and in fact the camera seems oddly attracted to his mercilessness, elegance and charisma, even as we assume were supposed to revile him. Even creepy John Glover plays his villain very straight, giving only a vague, intangible sense of menace. By creating a hero we cant understand and villains we gravitate towards, the film subtly creates a situation where we cant really take sides, and can only observe the pathetic hopelessness of both situations. After all, this is all about selling chocolates. This throws the entire proceedings into an almost absurdist light. Light touches of humor reinforce this classification and keep the proceedings from ever becoming bogged down in their gloominess.
The ending to the movie was always so shocking. I have to say, it is so much more chilling. This was all conceived and written by my personal favourite. Archie, a character that was so emotionally devastating, had more of the charm of the original than his much-discussed alter ego. There are a couple of subtle hints of both. For example, his final speech about his inability to love Archie in Season 9, the character’s response to the news that he “desperately needled him a man of faith”, is quite an unexpected, heartache and shock to everyone around him. That remark would be of great use in that he also had a great number of enemies. This would have an impact on your first viewing. It would also allow you to look forward to his return. What’s the next step? It would also make some sense. How did this character really end up in a place where he could not enjoy the rest of his life, and would have to live a life almost entirely as a child with the pain of a broken heart, all the while feeling the agony that a broken heart brings in the rest of his life? It is just as likely as that he would have a different perspective in life after his new life. This would imply, of course, that Archie simply does not enjoy life for the rest of his life. At all things. I mean, why do most of us care if the world ends without a single bright star going off in time?
The characterisation of him at the end was brilliant. How do you explain this character change from being Archie’s little brother who has become a man who must work together with his family to help one of his father’s children? The fact that he now begins to grow up from a broken child was a really great deal. Everyone is making this point in their minds, but the effect on the audience really hit home, and the whole arc as far as their character is concerned is very interesting. He starts to lose his love for his father – you can never know until that moment where he’s seen as nothing but a helpless little girl at a bad time. I love it a great deal. There is so much potential here, and the world of Archie feels like a big revelation.
The end credits were pretty interesting – especially in his last scene against Renaults. He’s so close to Archie’s family, and he goes through so much and still tries to get them back together, and he seems like they are very loving people. And so a nice juxtaposition from that scene. Also, I guess I can’t really speak for the rest of the group here. I think I have not seen Archie with such a sense of love any more so than a year or so ago, but once it becomes apparent to me that he is only an average kid he is becoming quite difficult to keep himself from. With the change to Renaults there is a major improvement. He’s able to get to know much more about how his family actually works, while still keeping the impression that he is just doing it for the sake of his life. His character will be quite different from when the rest of us saw the movie, which is great for giving our hero