Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Children's Books
| Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | |
 Original book cover of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory featuring an illustration by Joseph Schindelman |
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| Author | Roald Dahl |
|---|---|
| Original title | play |
| Illustrator | Joseph Schindelman (original) Quentin Blake (1998 editions onward) |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Children's Fantasy novel |
| Publisher | Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (original) Penguin Books (current) |
| Publication date | 1964 |
| Media type | Print ( Hardback, Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-394-91011-7 |
| Followed by | Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator |
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) is a children's book by British author Roald Dahl. This story of the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of eccentric candymaker Willy Wonka is often considered one of the most beloved children's stories of the 20th century.
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.
Plot summary
The book tells the story of a poor young boy, Charlie Bucket, who lives in a small home on the edge of a large city, with his parents and his four bedridden grandparents. Charlie is a bright, kindhearted boy who loves his family despite their shared hardships. Apart from his family, his greatest love in life is chocolate. Due to his family's extreme poverty he only receives one bar a year on his birthday. The book describes him as "Our Hero".
Near to Charlie's house is the largest chocolate factory in the world, owned by Mr. Willy Wonka.
Wonka is the largest and most innovative producer of chocolate, producing all kinds of wonderful and delicious sweets, including some sweets that seem impossible (such as ice cream that never melts, or chewing gum that never loses its flavour). He also creates a huge castle for Indian Prince Pondicherry entirely out of chocolate, which melts shortly afterward. As related by Charlie's bed-ridden Grandpa Joe, due to corporate espionage that came close to ruining the Wonka factory, Wonka shut down his factory, then years later reopened it using mysterious, unseen workers.
After many years of this arrangement, Wonka, in a surprise move, decides to re-open his factory to the public by initiating a lottery. Five Wonka Bars are sent out into the world which carry Golden Tickets hidden under their wrapping. Each ticket will admit the finder and one member of his/her family into the factory for a guided tour by the chocolate maker himself. A frenzy of chocolate-buying sweeps the globe. The winners of the first four tickets eventually prove to be a gluttonous boy called Augustus Gloop, a spoiled brat called Veruca Salt, a compulsive gum chewer named Violet Beauregarde and a television-obsessed little boy called Mike Teavee. As this happens, the poverty gripping Charlie's family tightens relentlessly.
By a near miracle, and at the eleventh hour, Charlie manages to find the last Golden Ticket. Grandpa Joe, Charlie's grandfather, rises from his bed out of excitement, and the two of them enter Willy Wonka's factory along with the other winners, where they encounter Wonka's many wondrous confectionery creations - including some prototypes which cause rather hair-raising side effects. Additionally, Wonka reveals to his guests that his mysterious factory workers are the " Oompa Loompas" - a group of pygmy-sized people from the nation of Loompaland who agreed to become Wonka's workforce because of his ability to supply unlimited quantities of their greatest delicacy, the cacao bean (the raw ingredient in chocolate). Through the book, they regularly break into spontaneous verse en masse to comment on the misbehaviour of the other children and its deleterious effects.
All four of the other Golden Ticket winners do indeed misbehave and one by one end up in bizarre, weird but funny predicaments which require removing them from the tour. Augustus Gloop drinks from Wonka's chocolate-mixing river, falls in and is sucked up by a glass pipe leading to the Fudge Room. The tight squeeze through the pipe renders him skinny. Violet Beauregarde tries an experimental piece of three-course-dinner gum, which causes her to turn blue and then swell up into a very large blueberry, requiring her to be sent to the Juicing Room to be squeezed back into her normal dimensions by the Oompa Loompas (although her blue skin is apparently permanent). Veruca Salt is thrown down a garbage chute by squirrels trained to find and dispose of "bad nuts". Her parents, attempting to rescue her, are thrown down the garbage chute as well. Later Veruca and her parents reappear, covered in garbage but unharmed. Mike Teavee is miniaturized by a television camera designed to deliver sample chocolate bars by TV and is thereafter sent to the chewing gum stretching machine to be restored to his normal size (but the process is overdone, with Mike becoming a very skinny giant in the end).
At the end of the story, it is revealed that the lottery was a front for Willy Wonka's attempt to choose his successor. As the last Golden Ticket winner left standing, Charlie inherits the factory and goes on a trip in a flying glass lift with Willy Wonka and Grandpa Joe, the story continuing in the sequel: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
Cultural Impact
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, due to its overwhelming success and two film adaptations, has become a cultural reference point in modern society, despite having been written over forty years ago. This cultural significance is reflected in the creation of an actual confectionary brand named after Willy Wonka, as well as the international recognition of the story and its characters.
Furthermore, the term "golden ticket" has since come to mean a treasured guarantee of something special and exclusive.
The reason of Wonka closing the factory from the public, (spies from other candy companies were coming in and stealing secret recipes), the many complicated machines found throughout the factory, and how closely guarded the recipes were, were all inspired from actual life occurrences. At the age of thirteen Roald Dahl worked for Cadbury, an English chocolate maker, and was amazed by all the machinery that took part in making chocolate. Also, there was a perpetual rivalry between Cadbury and Rowntree's (England's two biggest chocolate makers of the time), who ended up sending spies into each other's factories to steal the other's secret recipes. As a result of this, all recipes for both companies were heavily guarded.
Criticisms
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. 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 Le Guin voiced her support for this assessment in a letter to Cameron.
Rooms
There is a selection of themed rooms in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory which highlight a certain product or product development. Children on the tour meet an ironic, somewhat disturbing calamity in many of the rooms. A good example of this is the famous Chocolate Room. Everything in the room is edible, including the grass. It has a hot-melted chocolate waterfall that mixes the chocolate to a perfect texture. There are pipes that move the chocolate to different points within the factory. Augustus Gloop falls into the chocolate river and is sucked into a pipe that goes to the Fudge Room.
Other rooms which are predominantly featured are the Inventing Room where Violet Beauregarde turns into a blueberry and is moved to the Juicing Room. The Nut Sorting Room is where Veruca Salt is thrown down the garbage chute with her father. The Television Room is where Mike Teavee shrinks; he is stretched out in the Chewing Gum Stretching Room.
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.
- '"Butter scotch And Butter gin"'
- '"Candy-Coated pencils for Sucking"'
- '" Cavity-Filling Caramels– No more dentists"'
- '"Coconut-Ice Skating Rinks"'
- '"Cows that give Chocolate Milk"'
- '"Eatable Marshmallow Pillows"'
- '"Exploding Candy for your Enemies"'
- '"Fizzy Lemonade Swimming Pools"'
- '"Fizzy Lifting Drinks"'
- '"Hot Ice Creams for Cold Days"'
- '"Invisible Chocolate Bars for Eating in Class"'
- '"Lickable Wallpaper for Nursery Walls"'
- '"Luminous Lollies for Eating in Bed at Night"'
- '"Magic Hand-Fudge– When you hold it in your hand, you taste it in your mouth"'
- '"Mint Jujubes for the Boy Next Door– They'll give him green teeth for a month"'
- '"Rainbow Drops– Suck them and you can spit in six different colours."'
- '"Square Sweets that Look Round"'
- '"Stickjaw for Talkative Parents"'
- '"Storeroom Number 54; All the Creams– Dairy Cream, Whipped Cream, Coffee Cream, Clotted Cream, Vanilla Cream, and Hair Cream"'
- '"Storeroom Number 71; Whips– all Shapes and Sizes"'
- '"Storeroom Number 77– All the Beans, Cacao Beans, Coffee Beans, Jelly Bean, and Has Beans"'
- '" Strawberry-Juice Water Pistols"'
- '"Supervitamin-Chocolate"'
- '"The Rock-Candy Mine"'
- '"Toffee-Apple Trees For Planting in Your Garden– All Sizes"'
- '"Wriggle-Sweets That Wriggle Delightfully in your Tummy after Swallowing"'
Book revisions
Responding to criticisms from the NAACP, Canadian children's author Eleanor Cameron, and others for the book's portrayal of the Oompa Loompas as dark skinned and skinny African pygmies working in Wonka’s factory for cacao beans, Dahl changed some of the text, and Schindelman replaced some illustrations (the illustrations for the British version were also changed). This new version was released in 1973 in the USA. In the revised version the Oompa Loompas are described as having funny long golden-brown hair and rosy-white skin. Their origins were also changed from Africa to fictional Loompaland.
Lost chapter
A resurfacing of a chapter intended to be in the book which featured Miranda Piker, a character who was going to be in the original story appeared in 2005. Miranda Piker's traits were that of a 'Teacher's pet' and tattle-teller, with a head master father.
Her elimination chapter is titled "Spotty Powder." Wonka introduces the group to a new candy that will make children temporarily sick so that they can miss school that day, which enrages Miranda and her father. They vow to stop the candy from being made, and carelessly storm into the secret room where it is made.
Two screams are heard and Wonka reveals that the candy wouldn't work if he didn't "put a few head masters in the mix every so often." He then reassures Mrs. Piker that he was joking and her husband and daughter are not actually dead. It's unclear what eventually became of the Pikers.
"The secret ordeal of Miranda Piker" can be read here.
Derivations
The book was filmed in 1971 as Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. It has also been produced by Swedish Television as still drawings narrated by Ernst-Hugo Järegård. Another film version entitled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, was released on July 15, 2005. Both film portrayals are fairly faithful to the original story, yet add some new material. The Burton film in particular greatly expanded Willy Wonka's personal backstory. Both films likewise heavily expanded the personalities of the four "bad" children and their parents.
There is also a line of candies in the United States, Australia and Canada that uses the book's characters and imagery for its marketing. They're made in Brazil, by Nestlé, but not sold there.
In 1985, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory video game was released for the ZX Spectrum by developers Soft Option Ltd and publisher Hill MacGibbon.
On July 11, 2005, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory video game was released for the Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, and Windows PC by developers Backbone and High Voltage Software and publisher 2K Games.
On 1 April 2006, the British theme park Alton Towers opened a family boat ride attraction themed around Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, based on the book. The ride features a boat section where guests travel around the chocolate factory in bright pink boats on a chocolate river. In the final stage of the ride, guests will enter one of two glass elevators where they will join Willy Wonka as they travel the factory, eventually shooting up and out through the glass roof.
Awards and nominations
- New England Round Table of Children's Librarians Award (USA 1972)
- Surrey School Award (UK 1973)
- Millennium Children's Book Award (UK 2000)
- Blue Peter Book Award (UK 2000)
Film Adaptation
This book was first adapted into a film, released worldwide on June 30, 1971, named Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory with an estimated budget of $3 M, distributed by Paramount Pictures, directed by Mel Stuart, produced by David L. Wolper and starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe and Peter Ostrum as Charlie Bucket. Although the movie grossed only $4 M and was considered a box-office flop, it is now considered a cult classic.
Another film adaptation was released on July 10, 2005, starring Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka and Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket in a leading role, directed by Tim Burton and produced by Brad Grey. It was a hit, grossing about $470 M worldwide with an estimated budget of $150 M. It was distributed by Warner Bros. this time.
Editions
- ISBN 0-394-81011-2 (hardcover, 1973, revised Oompa Loompa edition)
- ISBN 0-87129-220-3 ( paperback, 1976)
- ISBN 0-14-031824-0 (paperback, 1985, illustrated by Michael Foreman)
- ISBN 1-85089-902-9 ( hardcover, 1987)
- ISBN 0-606-04032-3 ( prebound, 1988)
- ISBN 0-89966-904-2 ( library binding, 1992, reprint)
- ISBN 0-14-130115-5 (paperback, 1998)
- ISBN 0-375-81526-0 (hardcover, 2001)
- ISBN 0-375-91526-5 (library binding, 2001)
- ISBN 0-14-240108-0 (paperback, 2004)
- ISBN 0-8488-2241-2 (hardcover)