Chap­ter 22 of The Choco­late War presents a tense and unset­tling sit­u­a­tion for Bri­an Cochran, as he grap­ples with the anx­i­ety caused by the alarm­ing decline in sales for the choco­late sale fundrais­er. The pre­vi­ous day’s drop was the sharpest yet, and Bri­an feels the weight of the respon­si­bil­i­ty on his shoul­ders. His dread is inten­si­fied by the knowl­edge that Broth­er Leon, the unpre­dictable and volatile teacher, will be the one to hear the dis­mal fig­ures. Leon has already made Bri­an feel inad­e­quate with his pre­vi­ous harsh crit­i­cism, and the task of pre­sent­ing the sales totals seems like an insur­mount­able chal­lenge.

Despite his anx­i­ety, Bri­an feels a small, unex­pect­ed surge of tri­umph as he pre­pares to deliv­er the bad news to Leon. This moment offers Bri­an a sense of con­trol, know­ing that he is the one in charge of reveal­ing the trou­bling num­bers. When Leon arrives to hear the report, his pres­ence is oppres­sive and intim­i­dat­ing. Bri­an informs him that the sales fig­ures have not only fall­en short of expec­ta­tions but have also dropped below the totals from the pre­vi­ous year, which cre­ates a seri­ous prob­lem for their cur­rent fundrais­ing quo­ta. Leon’s reac­tion is imme­di­ate and sharp, ques­tion­ing Brian’s math­e­mat­i­cal skills in a way that feels more like an attack than a mere inquiry. This only fuels Brian’s frus­tra­tion, though he tries to remain calm, sup­press­ing any urge to respond in kind.

The ten­sion in the room esca­lates as Leon insists that Bri­an con­tin­ue read­ing the sales fig­ures, forc­ing him to go through the list of stu­dents who have met or exceed­ed their quo­tas. At first, Bri­an gains a sense of con­trol over the pac­ing of the report, but as he moves down the list, the num­bers begin to decline, and his dis­com­fort grows. Each drop in the num­bers feels like a heav­ier weight, espe­cial­ly when Bri­an is forced to announce that one stu­dent, Renault, has sold noth­ing at all. This moment of fail­ure sets the stage for Leon’s manip­u­la­tive response. Leon seizes on the oppor­tu­ni­ty to claim that the over­all decline in sales is due to what he describes as a “dis­ease” of apa­thy afflict­ing the stu­dents. In his eyes, Renault is the “car­ri­er” of this malaise, and he uses him as a scape­goat for the poor sales fig­ures. This accu­sa­tion inten­si­fies the pow­er dynam­ics at play, show­cas­ing Leon’s manip­u­la­tive behav­ior and his ten­den­cy to shift blame onto oth­ers to pro­tect his own posi­tion.

As Bri­an lis­tens to Leon’s omi­nous dec­la­ra­tion, he begins to real­ize that the teacher’s fix­a­tion on Renault is not just about the sales fig­ures but part of a larg­er strat­e­gy to main­tain con­trol and manip­u­late the stu­dents. This moment of scape­goat­ing high­lights the chill­ing nature of the pow­er struc­ture at their school, where a teacher’s anger and frus­tra­tion are direct­ed not at the sys­tem itself but at an indi­vid­ual stu­dent. Renault, who has already been mar­gin­al­ized, becomes the focal point of Leon’s frus­tra­tions, and this marks a sig­nif­i­cant turn­ing point in the nar­ra­tive. The atmos­phere becomes even more oppres­sive as Leon uses Renault as a sym­bol of all that is wrong with the stu­dent body, fos­ter­ing an envi­ron­ment where fear and manip­u­la­tion thrive.

The chap­ter ulti­mate­ly under­scores the tox­ic dynam­ics that are at play in the school, with Broth­er Leon using his author­i­ty to shift blame and con­trol the stu­dents. Brian’s inter­nal con­flict inten­si­fies as he wit­ness­es this moment of manip­u­la­tion, real­iz­ing that Leon’s actions go beyond a sim­ple reprimand—they are part of a broad­er pat­tern of con­trol and coer­cion. The fix­a­tion on Renault and the way in which he is scape­goat­ed for the sales decline serve as a metaphor for how pow­er and author­i­ty are mis­used with­in the school envi­ron­ment. Bri­an, who has already felt the weight of Leon’s influ­ence, now finds him­self caught in the midst of this pow­er strug­gle, his grow­ing unease a reflec­tion of the broad­er ten­sion and con­flict that will con­tin­ue to unfold through­out the sto­ry. The unset­tling nature of the chap­ter high­lights the per­va­sive theme of manip­u­la­tion and con­trol, set­ting the stage for fur­ther chal­lenges for Bri­an and his class­mates.