Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
- For the 1971 film, see Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. For the 2005 film, see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (film).
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 1964 children's book by British author Roald Dahl. The book is noted for its casual, easy language, and its detailed descriptions. Some describe it as science fiction for children. The same style is maintained for most of Dahl's children's books.
Synopsis
Template:Spoiler The book tells the story of a young boy, Charlie Bucket, who lives in poverty in a small, single-roomed house, with his parents and his four bedridden grandparents. Charlie is a kind, sweet, caring boy who loves his family despite their shared hardships. His greatest love in life is chocolate. Due to his family's poverty, however, he only receives a bar once a year, on his birthday.
Near to Charlie's house is the largest chocolate factory in the world, owned by Mr. Willy Wonka. Wonka is the largest and most inventive and innovative producer of chocolate, producing all kinds of wonderful and delicious sweets, including some that seem impossible (such as ice cream that never melts or chewing gum that never loses its flavor). Due to corporate espionage that came close to ruining the Wonka factory, Wonka closed his factory to the public and the factory is now only seen to house mysterious workers within.
Wonka, in a surprise move, decides to open his factory to the public, by initiating a lottery. Five Wonka Bar wrappers conceal Golden Tickets which will admit the finder and one or two members of his family into the factory for a guided tour by the candy maker himself.
By a near miracle, Charlie manages to find a Golden Ticket and he and his Grandpa Joe enter Willy Wonka's factory, where they encounter Wonka's many wondrous confectionery creations - including some prototypes which cause rather hair-raising side effects. The other Golden Ticket winners misbehave one by one and end up in bizarre, near-fatal predicaments which require removing them from the tour.
Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat but kind boy, was drinking from a river of chocolate when he was sucked up by one of the pipes leading to the Fudge Room. Violet Beauregarde, who has chewed the same piece and type of gum for months, tried an experimental piece of three-course-dinner gum and was turned into a giant blueberry, requiring her to be sent to an infirmary of sorts, to be pressed into her normal dimensions (although the bluish pigmentation is permanent). Veruca Salt, a spoiled brat whose rich father and mother give her anything she wants without question, understanding of ownership, or end, was thrown down a garbage chute by squirrels trained to find and dispose of the "bad nuts". Mike Teavee, who spends all day watching Westerns on television, was miniaturized by a television camera designed to deliver candy bars by TV and is sent to the gum stretching room to be restored to his normal size (but is overdone with Mike becoming a giant). Each of the children pose as an allegory for the various vices found within the personalities of children in those days. Charlie is clearly outlined as the ideal child, humble, kind, and "unspoiled."
Once inside the factory Wonka reveals to his guests that his mysterious factory workers are the "Oompa Loompas" - a group of 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 occasionally break into verse en masse to comment on the misbehaviour of the other children and its deleterious effects.
At the end of the story, it is revealed that the lottery was a ploy for Willy Wonka to choose his successor. As the last Golden Ticket winner left standing, Charlie inherits the factory and goes on a trip in a glass elevator with Willy Wonka, the story continuing in the sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
Book revisions
Responding to criticisms from the NAACP, Eleanor Cameron and others for the 1964 book's portrayal of the Oompa Loompas as dark skinned and skinny African pygmies working in Wonka’s factory for cacao beans, the book was changed and re-released in 1973. In the newer 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.
See also
The book was filmed in 1971 as Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, starring Gene Wilder as Wonka. It has also been produced by Swedish Television as an animated series with still animations narrated by Ernst-Hugo Järegård. Another film version entitled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as 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 paticular 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 that uses the book's characters and imagery for its marketing.
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 Gameboy Advance, and Windows PC by developers Backbone and High Voltage Software and publisher 2K Games.
ISBN numbers
- ISBN 0871292203 (paperback, 1976)
- ISBN 1850899029 (hardcover, 1987)
- ISBN 0606040323 (prebound, 1988)
- ISBN 0899669042 (library binding, 1992, reprint)
- ISBN 0141301155 (paperback, 1998)
- ISBN 0375815260 (hardcover, 2001)
- ISBN 0375915265 (library binding, 2001)
- ISBN 0142401080 (paperback, 2004)
- ISBN 0848822412 (hardcover)