Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

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This article is about the 1964 children's book.

For the 1971 film, see Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

For the 2005 film, see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (film).

For the 2005 video game, see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (video game).

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) is a children's book by British author Roald Dahl. The adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of eccentric candymaker Willy Wonka is considered to be 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.

1 Synopsis
2 Cultural Impact
3 Rooms
4 Book revisions
5 Derivations
6 Awards
7 ISBN numbers
8 External links

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Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The book tells the story of a young boy, Charlie Bucket, who lives in poverty in a small, two-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. Apart from his family, his greatest love in life is chocolate. Due to his family's extreme 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. Image:Blakewonka.jpg 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 flavour). As related by Charlie's Grandpa Joe, due to corporate espionage that came close to ruining the Wonka factory, Wonka closed his factory entirely, then later reopened it using mysterious never-seen 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 up to two members of his 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 pig-like 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 very last second, Charlie manages to find the last Golden Ticket. Grandpa Joe rises from his bed, 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 spontanteous verse en masse to comment on the misbehaviour of the other children and its deleterious effects.

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For all four of the other Golden Ticket winners do indeed misbehave and one by one end up in bizarre, near-fatal 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 pipes 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 and is transformed into a very petite blueberry, requiring her to be sent to the juicing room, to be squeezed back into her normal dimensions (although the blue skin is 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 chute as well. Later all three of them reappear covered in garbage. Mike Teavee is miniaturized by a television camera designed to deliver sample chocolate bars by TV and is thus sent to the gum-stretching room to be restored to his normal size (but the process is overdone with Mike becoming a very skinny 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."

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 flying glass lift with Willy Wonka and Grandpa Joe, the story continuing in the sequel Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.

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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. The extent to this is reflected by 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.

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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 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 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 Room is where Veruca Salt is thrown down the garbage chute with her father. The Television Room is where Mike Teavee shrinks and he is stretched out in the Taffy Room.

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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.

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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 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 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.

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 1st April 2006, the British theme park Alton Towers opened a new family boat ride attraction themed around Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, based on the book.Template:Ref

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