So I'm taking a class called "Materials for Young Adults" (awesome, right?) and this was my first read of the semester. 
 One of the things that stood out to me most about The Chocolate War was that Jerry Renault doesn't make the ultimate decision not to sell chocolates until halfway through the book. It's monumental, even in Cormier's description of the event. "Cites fell. Earth opened. Planets tilted. Stars plummeted. And the awful silence." The first half of the book is a slow burn to this precise moment and everything that follows is the unraveling of said moment. 
 Stories of teenage boys provide the perfect backdrop for issues of corruption (especially in a Matthew Golding-esque way), for what is adult corruption but an unchecked sense of entitlement and childish wanting? I loved that there was more of Archie's story as the secretary rather than Carter's story as the president of The Vigils, for Archie was much more the puppetmaster of the group. The quick snippets told about the individual boys were a great way to showcase the spectrum of decay and desire in the group. (For instance, how all Tubs Casper wanted was money to buy his girlfriend a gift...so he could feel her up.) I wanted more about Jerry, though. The pessimistic ending challenges notions of "happily ever after" and drives home the point that life isn't fair. Really, though, this whole book is a very long drive to that one destination.