Essay Options for The Chocolate War
One. Essay with Outline:
Develop a thesis that articulates the conflict between tribalism vs. individual conscience. Successful essays will compare this conflict as rendered in the novel with your personal experience. Additionally, you will have to provide single-sentence definitions of tribalism and individual conscience.
Paragraph 1: Introduction
Paragraph 2: Thesis with 4 or 5 mapping components
Paragraphs 3-9: Paragraphs that elaborate on your mapping components.
Paragraph 10: Conclusion, a powerful restatement of your thesis
Last page: Works Cited with no fewer than 4 sources.
Two. General Thesis with Outline
Develop a thesis that explains why the novel is so insufferably dark.
Paragraph 1: Introduction
Paragraph 2: Thesis with 4 or 5 mapping components
Paragraphs 3-9: elaborate on your mapping components
Conclusion: Restate your thesis
Three. Tribalism, Symbiosis, Obedience, Conformity, Determinism, and Individual Conscience in The Chocolate War
In page one, write a personal narrative about a time you compromised your individual conscience in order to obey peer pressure or some authority.
Then in the second page, start your thesis paragraph in which you connect the themes to the dangers of obedience as it relates to power, authority, and symbiosis. Because this is your multiple-source research paper, you will need to connect the novel’s themes to themes outside the text. You may, for example, look at the theme of obedience in the context of Stanley Milgram’s famous experiments or the abuse of power in the Stanford Experiment.
A thesis might look like this: The Chocolate War shows the demands of tribalism, which compromises our humanity by ________________________, _____________________________, _________________________, and _______________________________.
In your final page, you will write about how you or someone you know had a conflict between individual conscience and conformity but engaged in noble disobedience.
Your body paragraphs will correspond to the components you use to fill in the above blanks. Your conclusion will be one sentence, a brief, dramatic restatement of your thesis. Your final page, your Works Cited page, will show the sources you used from The Chocolate War, from my blog, from interviews, or from other helpful sources you find. Your Works Cited page and manuscript must conform to MLA format. Be sure to make your own catchy, creative title.
Four. Open-Ended Option for The Chocolate War
(the same as option two with different words) Nihilism in the Novel
Answer the question: Why is the novel saddled in nihilism with no hope of free will or redemption? Consider centripetal motion of the characters, corruption in high places, blind obedience to power, dehumanization, and determinism.
Paragraph 1: Introduction
Paragraph 2: Thesis with 4 or 5 mapping components
Paragraphs 3-9: Elaborate on your mapping components
Paragraph 10: Conclusion, restate your thesis
Research Paper Sources for your Works Cited Page
Alienation in The Chocolate War
The book's nihilism offends a school, which wants a petition to ban it!
The Chocolate War: Still Tasting Good
Why The Chocolate War Was Banned
Two. Chocolate War’s Theme of Disobedience as a Moral Virtue
Lexicon
1. embryonic stage of mental development, psychological immaturity that makes one blindly obey a parent or authority figure. To obey blindly is to never grow beyond the embryonic stage. A man who wants his wife to blindly obey him does not want an adult partner; he wants a child and vice versa. In Chapter 1, Jerry seems to be going out for football because “it’s the thing to do.” He seems to be on autopilot in his blind pursuit of conformity. He is in the embryonic stage. In the novel NO ONE seems to grow beyond this stage.
2. Emergence or birth of humanity is predicated on doubting, questioning, and sometimes challenging authority. Heroes and prophets question the status quo, the way things are. Maybe Jerry questions the status quo. Does he?
3. Placid conformity: this means to be passive and unquestioning, without skeptical powers. You do as your told and instructed because you have blind trust and an eagerness to please
4. “Bread and Circus”: The disparity between technological and moral development: Even as technology evolves, most humans are content with “bread and circus,” which results in placid conformity. Since the beginning of time, 1% of the human race controls 99% of the masses by placating them with bread and circus. To be afflicted with bread and circus means to have no intellectual curiosity and to live only to feed your animal appetites for entertainment and pleasure; you have no inner life to draw strength from
5. In our “free society,” most obedience takes the form of consumer obedience, which is conformity to desires stirred by marketing and peer pressure.
6. Conspicuous obedience
7. Insidious obedience: you obey without even knowing it because your unconscious directs your actions
8. Consumer ostracism (not having an iPod): if you don't buy the trendy stuff, you feel like a misfit or you feel low on the status totem pole.
9. Tribal obedience, doing what the herd does to avoid being ostracized.
Part Three. Example of Consumer Obedience: Costco Is a Super Store That Creates “Obedient Consumers”
1. Costco shoppers believe they have to buy bulk to get a “good deal” even if their products perish or are consumed in such unhealthy large quantities.
2. Costco shoppers like to show off what “a great deal” they got to other people.
3. Costco shoppers feel they are in competition with other shoppers to get a “great deal.”
4. Costco shoppers pay for an annual membership and are proud they belong to a special club that entitles them to remarkable privileges.
5. Costco shoppers over-spend because they’re deluded into thinking they are getting a “bargain.”
6. Costco shoppers are so compelled to “stock up” on “supplies” that they shop with a certain anxiety as if they were preparing for a drought, a famine, or a nuclear shelter. There is a joyless survival mentality.
7. Costco shoppers shop to escape from a desperation and fear about life and the more they shop the more dehumanized and violent they become.
Part Four: What Is “Noble Disobedience”?
One. Noble disobedience; an act of will in which we rebel against our caretakers, regardless of their intentions, when they wish to “protect” us by stagnating our growth and making us like babies in the womb. See the film Pleasantville or The Truman Show.
Two. Smothered by the Caretaker. When an authority figure—God, parents, spouse, teacher, school gang like the Vigils, community—takes care of all our needs but restrains our intellectual and emotional growth so that in essence we remain like fetuses in the womb. We never emerge and become fully human. We should be disobedient toward these smothering caretakers and establish our independence, our autonomy, and emerge as fully-realized adult human beings.
Three. Disobeying the Herd. Another form of noble disobedience is when we refuse to conform to the Herd, the group who acts cruel against the outsider, insists that we’re not cool unless we buy an iPod or a pair of True Religion designer jeans. Or there is Jerry’s refusal to sell chocolates, first from his teacher’s order, then from the order of The Vigils.
Four. Related the number 3, disobedience to Consumer Culture, which says you can’t define yourself as a “winner in society” unless you have a collection of “essential possessions.” For example, some believe, knowingly or not, that there are only two types of people in the world, home owners and renters.
Five. Disobedience as the courage to be different, to produce art that is not popular and then over time it becomes popular. This is called having the conviction of genius.
Six. Disobedience means venturing into the Unknown and leaving your familiar lifestyle behind you because though your familiar lifestyle gives you comfort and belonging, it does not give you a sense of meaning or individuality. For example, it may mean leaving a comfortable relationship that languishes in stagnation. I had a student who left her boyfriend and went to UNLV for this reason.
Seven. Disobedience means ignoring the expectations of your family and friends regarding your career and marriage plans.
Eight. Disobedience means refusing to worship society’s gods, heroes, and myths when you can see the fraud and emptiness behind the icons.
Nine. Disobedience means not being so needy as requiring the approval of others even if this absence of approval results in your having to stand alone. Your courage allows you to stand in solitude without the comfort and approval of the Herd.
Ten. Disobedience means “saying no to power.” This means from a philosophical point of view that we desire justice for all instead of a few enjoying power over the many.
Eleven. Disobedience means disobeying the bureaucracy that demands our dehumanization through unquestioned obedience of routine and sometimes immoral actions.
Twelve: Psychologist, philosopher, and author Erich Fromm writes: “If a man can only obey and not disobey, he is a slave; if he can only disobey and not obey, he is a rebel. Jerry’s conflict is choosing between being a slave to conformity or a noble rebel against it. We shall see.
Part Five. Reading Questions
1. How is the theme of courage introduced in Chapter One and why is it introduced? The novel addresses the courage to be true to one’s conscience. Also he compares himself to Peter, the man who betrayed Christ. The novel’s theme of cowardice and self-betrayal in the face of conforming to the tribe. Does Jerry Renault even like football? Or is he doing it to conform? He fears being a misfit and stares at the hippies and other misfits at the bus stop, perhaps because he sees a reflection of himself or he longs for a freedom these misfits represent. See the end of Chapter 3.
2. Describe the relationship between Obie and Archie in Chapter 2. How are they different? How are they the same? They both worship the same thing, power. And they see themselves as cogs in the power machine. Their goals are the same: To be a more important cog than the others, to ascend the hierarchy.
3. What evidence in Chapter 2 suggests Archie’s sadism or penchant for cruelty? How do you account for this. Was he born this way or did he become like this? Explain. How is his personality crucial to the novel’s theme? Consider the theme of dehumanization, towards others and himself. A critique of Archie: As smart as he is and as smart as he thinks he is, he is blind to the loss of his humanity from playing the power game. He makes the same conventional assumptions about the necessity of conformity as most people do. But he thinks he’s different. He’s deluded. His conformity, his power play, his sadism have all resulted in the loss of his humanity.
Writing an introduction for your essay on The Chocolate War
Write a narrative about a time you compromised individual conscience in order to conform to the group and seek its approval rather than live by your own values and morals
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