Do I Dare Disturb The Universe? (1984) - Plot & Excerpts
“Do I dare disturb the universe?” asks T. S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock. It’s not an easy question, and there are no easy answers. Robert Cormier, in his cautionary tale The Chocolate War, has his young hero ask J. Alfred’s question, and because this is not a novel of realism, as many people think, but a cautionary tale, the answer is, “You’d better not dare, because if you do, you’ll get hurt.” In this book, Cormier takes something which is already in existence in a small way and has it burst out into enormous proportions, in somewhat the same way that James Clavell does in The Children’s Story, a small chill book which he was inspired to write when his daughter came home from school, having been taught by rote to say the Pledge of Allegiance, gabbling it with no understanding, and he saw how easily the tender mind of a child can be manipulated. The writer whose words are going to be read by children has a heavy responsibility. And yet, despite the undeniable fact that children’s minds are tender, they are also far more tough than many people realize, and they have an openness and an ability to grapple with difficult concepts which many adults have lost.
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