Character Analysis: The Chocolate War

Jerry made some crazy choices in The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier. And after reading Siegel's article on Teen's brains and their development, we can see why Jerry made some of these decisions. Dopamine could be responsible for Jerry's football try outs, him not selling chocolate, and his fight with Janza.

Jerry really wanted to try out for the football team, although he was not suit for it at all, being very skinny. Jerry ended up getting really hurt in the try outs, but continued to play to impress the coach. In the book it says, "Landing in his knees, hugging the ball, he urged himself to ignore the pain that gripped his groin, knowing that it was important to betray no sign of distress, remembering The Goober's advice, "Coach is testing you, testing, and he's looking for guts." I think that Jerry was thinking very irrationally. He was analyzing the task at hand and ignoring the cons and glorifying the pros. To him, it didn't matter how hurt he got, he wanted to impress his coach and his team. After the try out he thought he was dead, his legs were smashed and he could barely stand. The Vigils saw that he was tough, and decided to recruit him. …show more content…
Jerry was up for the task and did it. But after they told him to start selling it, he said no. This could have to do with dopamine releasing from doing new and "thrilling" activities. No one else at his school refused to sell cupcakes, so it was a new thing. You could tell he was enjoying himself, because the book said "Jerry answered, his own voice clear and forceful, ringing with a triumph of his own." He said he wanted to make his own choices. But doing this made lots of people at his school dislike him. An example would be