Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) is a children's book by British author Roald Dahl. The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of eccentric candymaker Willy Wonka.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was first published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1964, and in the United Kingdom by George Allen & Unwin in 1967. The book was adapted into two major motion pictures: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in 1971, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 2005. The book's sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator , was written by Roald Dahl in 1972. Dahl had also planned to write a third book in the series, but had never finished.
The story was originally inspired by Roald Dahl's experience of chocolate companies during his schooldays. Cadbury would often send test packages to the schoolchildren in exchange for their opinions on the new products. At that time (around the 1920s) Cadbury and Rowntree's were England's two largest chocolate makers, and they each often tried to steal trade secrets by sending spies into the other's factory, posing as employees. Because of this, both companies became highly protective of their chocolate making processes. It was a combination of this secrecy and the elaborate, often gigantic, machines in the factory that inspired Roald Dahl to write Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Synopsis
Charlie Bucket, an intelligent boy from a poor family, lives with his parents and both sets of elderly grandparents. From these four, especially Grandpa Joe, he hears stories about the candymaker Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory he built in Charlie's hometown. As time passed, rival chocolate makers sent in spies, posing as workers, in order to steal his recipes. Frustrated by this, Mr. Wonka decided to send home his workers and close the factory. Years of silence passed until one day, when the factory mysteriously came back to life. The gates remain locked however; the factory has resumed operations with workers whose identity is a mystery. Nobody, including Wonka, is seen going in or out of the factory anymore.
Wonka holds a worldwide contest, in which five Golden Tickets are hidden under the wrappers of his candy bars; the prize for those who find them is a day-long tour of the factory and a lifetime supply of chocolate. The contest becomes a worldwide mania, with people resorting to increasingly desperate and unscrupulous measures to find the tickets, and anyone who succeeds becomes front-page headline news and a worldwide celebrity. Charlie and four bad children, the gluttonous Augustus Gloop, spoiled Veruca Salt, gum-addicted Violet Beauregarde, and television-obsessed Mike Teavee, win the contest and go on the tour, led by Wonka. As the group moves from room to room, the tour turns into a punishment for the bad children as one child after another falls victim to his/her particular vices and is removed. Augustus falls into a chocolate river and is sucked up a pipe to the fudge room; Violet turns into a blueberry after consuming experimental chewing gum; Veruca is thrown down a garbage chute; and Mike is shrunk after meddling with dangerous television equipment. They leave the factory with permanent reminders of their misbehavior as well as their lifetime supply of chocolate: Augustus is squeezed thin, Violet is purple, Veruca is covered in garbage, and Mike is ten feet tall and very thin.
Charlie is the only child who does not misbehave throughout the factory. Seeing that he is the only one left, Wonka announces that he has "won." He receives the entire factory and will take over the company after Wonka retires. The reason Wonka had sent out the Golden Tickets was to find a child to be his heir, as he himself has no family to carry on his work. The two board a special glass elevator along with Grandpa Joe, who accompanied Charlie on the tour. As they are propelled up from the factory, the book ends, but the story continues in the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator .
Criticisms
Although the book has always been popular, over the years a number of prominent individuals have spoken critically of the novel. Children's novelist and literary historian John Rowe Townsend has described the book as "fantasy of an almost literally nauseating kind" and accusing it of "astonishing insensitivity" regarding the original portrayal of the Oompa-Loompas as black pygmies, although Dahl did revise this later (See below). Another novelist, Eleanor Cameron, compared the book to the candy that forms its subject matter, commenting that it is "delectable and soothing while we are undergoing the brief sensory pleasure it affords but leaves us poorly nourished with our taste dulled for better fare". Ursula K. Le Guin voiced her support for this assessment in a letter to Cameron. Defenders of the book have pointed out it was unusual for its time in being quite dark for a children's book, with the "antagonists" not being adults or monsters (as is the case even for most of Dahl's books) but the naughty children.
Main Rooms
There are four main rooms that the tour goes through, losing one child at a time.
Chocolate Room
The Chocolate Room is the first room that the many different people able to go into. It is said that everything in this room is edible: the pavements, the bushes, even the grass. There are trees made of taffy that grow jelly apples, bushes that sprout lollipops, mushrooms that spurt whipped cream, pumpkins filled with sugar cubes instead of seeds, jelly bean stalks, and spotty candy cubes. The main icon of the room is the Chocolate River, where the chocolate is mixed and churned by the waterfall, but must not be touched by human hands. Willy Wonka proclaims, "There is no other factory in the world that mixes its chocolate by waterfall." Pipes that hang on the ceiling come down and suck up the chocolate, then send it to other rooms of the factory, such as the Fudge Room, and Augustus Gloop is sucked into one pipe after falling into the river while drinking from it.
The Inventing Room
The Inventing Room is the second room that the tour goes through. Mr. Wonka states that all of his ideas are simmering and bubbling in this room, and that Slugworth would give his false teeth to stay five minutes inside. This room is home to Wonka's new—and still insufficiently tested—candies, such as Everlasting Gobstoppers, Hair Toffee, and Wonka's greatest idea so far, Three-Course Dinner Chewing Gum. This candy is a three course dinner all in itself, containing, "Tomato soup, roast beef and baked potato, and blueberry pie and ice cream". However, once the chewer gets to the dessert, the side effect is that they turn into a giant "blueberry"; this happens to Violet Beauregarde after she rashly grabs and consumes the experimental gum.
Violet is subsequently taken to the Juicing Room "to be squeezed like a small juicy best tasting grape EVER" to get the juice out. The tour then leaves the Inventing Room.
The Nut Sorting Room
The Nut Sorting Room is the third room on the tour. This room is where Wonka uses trained squirrels to break open good walnuts for use in his sweets. All rotten,unripe or stinky walnuts are thrown down a garbage chute which leads to an incinerator. Veruca Salt desperately wants a squirrel, but becomes furious when Wonka tells her she cannot have one. She tries to grab a squirrel for herself, but it rejects her as a "bad nut" and an army of squirrels haul her across the floor and throw her down the garbage chute. Wonka assures her father that she is stuck on top of the garbage chute, and while Mr. Salt is looking for her in the chute, the squirrels push him in as well.
In the 1971 movie version, the nut sorting room is an egg room, with large geese laying golden chocolate eggs. The sorting mechanism is the same, but Veruca places herself on the mechanism while trying to get a goose.
The Television Room
The Television Room is home to Wonka's latest invention, Television Chocolate, where they take a giant bar of Wonka chocolate and shrink it, then send it through the air in a million pieces to appear in a television. The bar can be taken from the screen, and even consumed. Charlie notes that the chocolate is "still delicious." Mike Teavee is amazed at this new discovery, and attempts to send himself through television, resulting in him being shrunk down to be no more than an inch high. Wonka suggests that he be put through the Gum Stretcher, where he tests the stretchiness of gum. He also planned to give him vitamins, notably Vitamin Wonka. The Oompa Loompas escort Mr. Teavee and his newly short son to the Gum Stretcher.
In the 2005 and 1971 movie versions, Mike Teavee is stretched by the Taffy Puller. Also, in the 1971 version, Mike comes to the factory with his mother not his father.
Other rooms
Other rooms, hinted at but not visited, are listed below in alphabetical order. Each is given the name of the product it contains, which is presumably made or extracted there.
- Butterscotch and Buttergin
- Candy-Coated Pencils for Sucking
- Cavity-Filling Caramels: "No more dentists!"
- Cokernut-Ice Skating Rinks
- Cows that give Chocolate Milk
- Devils Drenchers to set your breath alight
- Eatable Marshmallow Pillows
- Exploding Candy for your Enemies
- Fizzy Lemonade Swimming Pools
- Fizzy Lifting Drinks
- Glumptious Globgobblers "all the perfumed juices go squirting do
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