The Chocolate War – Robert Cormier

 One of the things I would do with this text is use it to teach intertextuality.  I would begin by pointing out that at the beginning, the term “crucifix” comes up a lot, then I would ask what other places that they notice references to Christianity in the text (they are everywhere, from the setting to the language used as swear words).  Once we had a good list, I would then talk about why texts have overt references to other texts.  From there, I would ask the students to start drawing connections between the story of Jerry and the story of Jesus (starting with the names – first two letters the same, the same number of letters in each name…). We would wrap up this part of the discussion by seeing what conclusions we can draw about the intertextuality in The Chocolate War. (msg)