Resistance Against Peer-Pressure: The Chocolate War

Title:  The Chocolate War
Author:  Robert Cormier
Date of Publication:  August 1, 1986
Publisher: Dell Laurel-Leaf




            The story is about the life of a young boy named Jerry. He goes to an all boy school called Trinity. Although Jerry is the protagonist the point of view of the book changes. In the school the is a powerful gang called the Vigils. They give “assignments” to students which usually disturbs the flow of the school. There was the assignment of room nineteen. A student named the Goober had to unscrew all the chairs and desks in the class. Jerry would also receive an assignment about a chocolate sell going on in the school.

            In the chocolate sale everybody receives fifty box of chocolate to sell except for Jerry who strictly refuses to sell the boxes. Later in the book the author  reveals that it was his assignment from the vigils. He was suppose to refuse selling the boxes for two weeks. After those two weeks, he was supposed to take them and sell them. Then again at the end of the two weeks he still refused to sell the chocolates although the assignment was over.

              Because of Jerry's actions, the sale went down because the students were tired of selling all this "junks" for the school. With the help of the vigils, all the chocolates were “sold” (even if they weren't sold at all). But still Jerry had to pay the consequences of his action. At the end of the book, he was badly injured in a boxing match against Jaza. He lost consciousness. Since brother Leon was backing Archie, the vigils didn't get in trouble for the boxing match.

Quote: “Now what is you answer ? Yes or no?”(Cormier,84)
                When I'm reading a book I always look for the part that connects to the title. Once you get to that part, usually the next events are predictable. in this book it wasn't. Once I made the connection between the title and the book, it was impossible to really predict what would happen next. I still tried at this point to make the smallest prediction but it still was impossible. It was at that point that i realized that i was reading the work of a great author

Making the Right Choices: Her last death

Title:  Her Last Death
Author: Susanna Sonnenberg
Date of Publication: January 1st, 2008
Publisher: Scribner


               Susanna was raised by her mother. Her mother unfortunately wasn't the best example that she could follow. She was extremely addicted to drugs. Growing up she was exposed to the life that a prostitute would have. Deep inside of her she knew her mom wasn't suppose to live the way she was. 
               Unfortunately for her she got influenced and started behaving almost the same way that her mother was behaving. She first started doing drugs which her mother provided her. She even received cocaine from her. it took her many years and went through many struggles to finally make the big change in her life which will at the end of the book cost her one of the most precious thing of her life.
             Quote:“I didn’t want you to know that part. I let him rape me. So he wouldn’t come for you.”
(Sonnenberg,263)
                This shows that despite the fact that her mom was a drug addict she still loved her daughter up to the point to get raped because of her. You could still argue the inverse. She didn’t really care too much about who had a sexual intercourse with her. She was even probably happy about it. It would mean just one more guy on her list. I liked that quote because it showed that everybody always have a good side. Even if she pretty much messed up Suzanna's life she still could make sacrifices for her.