Literature Discussion Group: A War? Over Chocolate? Really?

24 August 2012

A War? Over Chocolate? Really?

Yep. More or less.

On September 14th we'll be meeting to discuss our first book for the 2012-2013 session: The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier.

Mmm . . . chocolate.

It sounds yummy, but don't be fooled by this book's sweet sounding title. Okay, I guess it's not that sweet, since along with CHOCOLATE it also includes WAR, but still, it's important to realize that we're starting right out with a controversial one.

The Chocolate War has been featured regularly on the American Library Association's annual list of the Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books for reasons including: offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit material, unsuitability for age group, and violence.

So . . . why are we reading it?

Well, as Cormier himself said in this AP article (after 26 years of defending the book), "I feel like I must have done something right. . . . There wouldn't be all these concerns about an ineffective book."

So that's the question I'm asking you. Is this an effective book? And what does that even mean? How can a book be effective or ineffective? To help you think it through, consider the following questions:

Are all books supposed to accomplish something? If so, what? If not, why read them?
What do you think Cormier was trying to accomplish (if anything) with The Chocolate War? Does he accomplish it? Why or why not?
Is the ending of this book satisfactory? Could it end differently? Should it end differently? If so, how? If not, why not?
Is all of the material that people have objected to (language, sexual content, violence, religion) necessary to the plot and message of the book? Do you think Cormier could have left some of it out and still achieved the same effect?

These questions will be a big part of our discussion, so be sure to give them some thought. And after you've given them all some thought, choose one of the questions above (#1-4) and write a response (one paragraph to one page or so) to bring with you to our discussion.

Happy reading! See you on the 14th,

Belinda

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Looking For Hamlet Scholar Talk

This is another event at the PPL in March in honor of the First Folio Exhibit, and it's on Wednesday, March 9th from 12-1:30pm in the Rines Auditorium.

"Focusing on Hamlet, University of Southern Maine Professor Ben Bertram will examine the way editors, directors, actors, teachers, and scholars choose among folio, quarto, or conflated versions of the plays. He will also be accompanied by actors who will perform Hamlet’s soliloquies and join in a discussion of how Shakespeare’s words make it from the page to the stage."

Get the full description here.

Definitions and Clarifications

pneumatic, adj. - literally, full of air. This term is often used to describe women in BNW, and seems to suggest that a woman like Lenina, who's "wonderfully pneumatic," is buxom, curvy, shapely, and yes, even bouncy. But pneumatic could also have a second meaning here, and that is to indicate that someone is a bit of an air-head, light on the intellectual matter, or not bogged down by weighty matters or considerations.

viviparous, adj. - a creature that is viviparous gives birth to live young that develop inside the body, as in the way mammals reproduce. Humans are viviparous (at least, they were until A.F. 632).

Malthusian, adj. - based on the beliefs of Robert Thomas Malthus, a British economist who argued that "population tends to increase faster than food supply, with inevitably disastrous results unless the increase in population is checked by moral restraints or by war, famine, and disease." - The Free Dictionary

Pavlovian Conditioning, n. - also called Classic Conditioning, it's a way of getting a subject to make certain associations between two previously unrelated things; Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was the psychologist who discovered that if he always rang a bell right before feeding his dogs, they came to associate the sound of the bell with getting fed, and therefore would start to drool upon hearing the bell. Here's a great comic related to that experiment.

Literature Discussion Group

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24 August 2012

A War? Over Chocolate? Really?

Yep. More or less.

So . . . why are we reading it?

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