Week of 11/11/13: The Chocolate War

Prompt: Are the characters realistic (do they seem like they could be read people)? Why or why not?
Pages read: Start-End (I think a little over 260)


   This was a very upsetting book un which teenage boys attending an all make school use psychological warfare to try to do a variety of things.  Most of all, it causes the characters to break down, and has an immense affect on the mental state of the main character and those associated.  So in that case, these characters (which were very interesting, and I have to say this was a very well written book) were not believable.  The fact that one teenager could create an organization within his school and have that organization (the Vigils) terrorize students, and even scare administrators off, is not altogether believable.  But it certainly makes for a great story.

  However, I do believe someone could be evil enough to *SPOILER ALERT* try and kill off a classmate, or anyone who you've known for a while.  One argument I always have a say in is if people can be born inherently evil.  My opinion on this is that no one is born evil, just more clever and cunning than the rest.  Archie from the Chocolate War I think proved my point.  Archie is described as extremely clever and creative, which helps him do all the things he does in the book.  A favorite quote of mine from the TV show Sherlock when Moriarty (an evil genius) says "I am not normal", which describes Archie very well.  So in this case, the characters are believable.

  One final point I have about the characters being realistic or not is about the background characters.  The supporting characters, because I thought the main characters persona was believable.  An unfortunate character, who's name I can't remember, was very sensitive to what was happening, and behaved in the way I think people in real life would in that situation. Most times, I felt bad for him.  The teachers were absent during the book, so that was nice and I thought is was believable that they would stay out of the situation to avoid getting hurt, or avoid their reputation getting ruined.  The only teacher that was not absent was Brother Leon, one of the creepiest characters I have read about in a while.  Although he was a fantastic character, personally I thought he was cruel (in a very cool way) and I was wondering how he got away with it.  So his persona was a bit unbelievable to me.

That's all the characters I had a strong opinion on.  If you planning on reading this book, I warn you.  This book was quite upsetting.  But if you're like me and  love reading books with unhappy endings and evil characters, this is one of the coolest books you'll ever read.