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
