Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a 1964 children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. The story features the adventures of young Charlie Bucket inside the chocolate factory of eccentric chocolatier 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, 11 months later. The book has been 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 1971 and published in 1972. Dahl had also planned to write a third book in the series but never finished it.
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, posing as employees, into the other's factory. 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 Dahl to write the story.
Video Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Plot
11-year-old Charlie Bucket lives in poverty in a tiny house with his parents and four grandparents. His grandparents share the only bed in the house, located in the only bedroom. Charlie and his parents sleep on a mattress on the floor. One day, Grandpa Joe tells him about the legendary and eccentric chocolatier, Willy Wonka and all the wonderful sweets he made until the other sweetmakers sent in spies to steal his secret recipes, which led him to close the factory forever. The next day, the newspaper announces that Mr Wonka is reopening the factory and has invited five children to come on a tour, after they find a golden ticket in a Wonka Bar. Each ticket find is a media sensation and each finder becomes a celebrity. The first four golden tickets are found by the gluttonous Augustus Gloop, the spoiled and petulant Veruca Salt, the gum-addicted Violet Beauregarde, and the TV-obsessed Mike Teavee.
One day, Charlie sees a fifty-pence coin (dollar bill in the US version) buried in the snow. He then buys himself a Wonka Bar and finds the fifth golden ticket. The ticket says he can bring any family members with him to the factory and Charlie's parents decide to allow Grandpa Joe to go with him.
After meeting Mr Wonka, the kids and their parents go inside where they meet Oompa-Loompas, a race of small people who help Mr Wonka operate the factory since he rescued them from poverty and fear in their home country Loompaland. The other kids are ejected from the factory in comical, mysterious and painful ways - befitting their various greedy characters and personalities. Augustus gets sucked up the pipe after falling into the Chocolate River in the Chocolate Room, Violet blows up into a giant blueberry after sampling an experimental three-course chewing gum meal in the Inventing Room, Veruca is thrown down the rubbish chute in the Nut Room after the nut-testing squirrels consider her a "bad nut," and Mike gets shrunk after he tries to be the first person to be sent by television in the Television Room's Television Chocolate Technology. With only Charlie remaining, Mr Wonka congratulates him for "winning" the factory and, after explaining his true age and the reason behind his golden tickets, names Charlie his successor. They ride the Great Glass Elevator to Charlie's house while the other four children go home (Augustus squeezed thin, Violet all blue in the face, Veruca covered in rubbish, and Mike stretched ten feet tall). Afterwards, Mr Wonka invites Charlie's family to come live with him in the factory, and they do.
Maps Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Publication
Dahl's widow said that Charlie was originally written as 'a little black boy.' Dahl's biographer said the change to a white character was driven by Dahl's agent, who thought a black Charlie would not appeal to readers.
Unused chapters
Various unused and draft material from Dahl's early versions of the novel have been found. In the initial, unpublished drafts of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory nine golden tickets were distributed to tour Willy Wonka's secret chocolate factory and the children faced more rooms and more temptations to test their self-control. Some of the names of the children cut from the final work include:
- Clarence Crump, Bertie Upside, and Terence Roper (who overindulge in Warming Candies)
- Elvira Entwhistle (lost down a trash chute, renamed as Veruca Salt)
- Violet Glockenberry (renamed Strabismus and finally Beauregarde)
- Miranda Grope and Augustus Pottle (lost up a chocolate pipe, combined into the character Augustus Gloop)
- Miranda Mary Piker (renamed from Miranda Grope, became the subject of Spotty Powder)
- Marvin Prune (a conceited boy)
- Wilbur Rice and Tommy Troutbeck, the subjects of The Vanilla Fudge Room
- Herpes Trout (renamed Mike Teavee)
"Spotty Powder"
"Spotty Powder" was first published as a short story in 1973. In 2005, The Times reprinted "Spotty Powder" as a "lost" chapter, saying it had been found in Dahl's desk, written backwards in mirror writing (the way Leonardo da Vinci wrote his journal). This chapter describes Spotty Powder, which looks and tastes like sugar, but causes bright red pox-like spots to appear on faces and necks five seconds after ingestion, so children who eat Spotty Powder do not have to go to school. The spots fade on their own a few hours later. After learning the purpose of Spotty Powder, the humourless, smug Miranda Piker and her equally humourless father (a schoolmaster) are enraged and disappear into the Spotty Powder room to sabotage the machine. Soon after entering, they are heard making what Mrs Piker interpreted as screams. Mr Wonka assures her (after making a brief joke where he claims that headmasters are one of the occasional ingredients) it was only laughter. Exactly what happened to them is not revealed in the extract.
In an early draft, sometime after being renamed from Miranda Grope to Miranda Piker but before "Spotty Powder" was written, she falls down the chocolate waterfall and ends up in the Peanut-Brittle Mixer. This results in the "rude and disobedient little kid" becoming "quite delicious." This early draft poem was slightly rewritten as an Oompa-Loompa song in the lost chapter, which now puts her in the "Spotty-Powder mixer" and instead of being "crunchy and ... good [peanut brittle]" she is now "useful [for truancy] and ... good."
"The Vanilla Fudge Room"
In 2014, The Guardian revealed that Dahl had cut another chapter ("The Vanilla Fudge Room") from an early draft of the book. The Guardian reported the now-eliminated passage was "deemed too wild, subversive and insufficiently moral for the tender minds of British children almost 50 years ago." In what was originally chapter five in that version of the book, Charlie goes to the factory with his mother (instead of his grandfather, as originally published). At this point, the chocolate factory tour is down to eight kids, including Tommy Troutbeck and Wilbur Rice. After the entire group climbs to the top of the titular fudge mountain, eating vanilla fudge along the way, Troutbeck and Rice decide to take a ride on the wagons carrying away chunks of fudge. The wagons take them directly to The Pounding And Cutting Room, where the fudge is reformed and sliced into small squares for retail sale. Wonka states the machine is equipped with "a large wire strainer ... which is used specially for catching children before they fall into the machine" adding that "It always catches them. At least it always has up to now."
The chapter dates back to an early draft with ten golden tickets, including two for Miranda Grope and Augustus Pottle, who fell into the chocolate river prior to the events of "Fudge Mountain". Augustus Pottle was routed to the Chocolate Fudge Room, not the Vanilla Fudge Room explored in this chapter, and Miranda Grope ended up in the Peanut Brittle Room.
"The Warming Candy Room"
Also in 2014, Vanity Fair published a plot summary of "The Warming Candy Room", wherein three boys eat too many "warming candies" and end up "bursting with heat."
The Warming Candy Room is dominated by a boiler, which heats a scarlet liquid. The liquid is dispensed one drop at a time, where it cools and forms a hard shell, storing the heat and "by a magic process ... the hot heat changes into an amazing thing called 'cold heat.'" After eating a single warming candy, one could stand naked in the snow comfortably. This is met with predictable disbelief from Clarence Crump, Bertie Upside, and Terence Roper, who proceed to eat at least one hundred warming candies each, resulting in profuse perspiration. The three boys and their families discontinue the tour after they are taken to cool off "in the large refrigerator for a few hours."
"The Children's-Delight Room"
Roald Dahl originally planned for a child called Marvin Prune to be included in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Dahl submitted the excised chapter regarding Marvin Prune to The Horn Book Review in the early 1970s. Rather than publish the chapter, Horn Book responded with a critical essay by novelist Eleanor Cameron, who criticised Dahl's worth as a human being.
Although it was believed that Horn Book never returned the chapter, Marvin Prune's chapter is actually available, but it has not yet been published. "The Children's-Delight Room" was reworked into "Spotty Powder". It is present in two versions. One features the workers from "The Vanilla Fudge Room" but also include "tiny whispery voices" who sing the songs after each child's exit, and Charlie with his mother and father. The second version features Grandpa Joe, Charlie's grandfather, who is present in the final book, and the Oompa-Loompas. In the version with the voices, the voices actually sing two songs, a two verse type one found in "The Vanilla Fudge Room", plus a longer one like the type that is found in the final book. Like Miranda, Marvin loves school and suffers the same fate as her--supposedly getting ground into powder.
Reception
A fan of the book since childhood, film director Tim Burton wrote: "I responded to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because it respected the fact that children can be adults." In a 2006 list for the Royal Society of Literature, author J. K. Rowling (author of the Harry Potter books) named Charlie and the Chocolate Factory among her top ten books every child should read.
A 2004 study found that it was a common read-aloud book for fourth-graders in schools in San Diego County, California. A 2012 survey by the University of Worcester determined that it was one of the most common books that UK adults had read as children, after Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and The Wind in The Willows.
Groups who have praised the book include:
- New England Round Table of Children's Librarians Award (USA, 1972)
- Surrey School Award (UK, 1973)
- Read Aloud BILBY Award (Australia, 1992)
- Millennium Children's Book Award (UK, 2000)
- Blue Peter Book Award (UK, 2000)
- The Big Read, rank 35 in a survey of the British public by the BBC to identify the "Nation's Best-loved Novel" (UK, 2003)
- National Education Association, one of "Teachers' Top 100 Books for Children" based on a poll (USA, 2007)
- School Library Journal, rank 61 among all-time children's novels (USA, 2012)
In the 2012 survey published by SLJ, a monthly with primarily US audience, Charlie was the second of four books by Dahl among the so-called Top 100 Chapter Books, one more than any other writer.
Although the book has always been popular and considered a children's classic by many literary critics, a number of prominent individuals have spoken unfavorably of the novel over the years. Children's novelist and literary historian John Rowe Townsend has described the book as "fantasy of an almost literally nauseating kind" and accused it of "astonishing insensitivity" regarding the original portrayal of the Oompa-Loompas as black pygmies, although Dahl did revise this in later editions. Another novelist, Eleanor Cameron, compared the book to the sweets that form 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 wrote in support of this assessment in a letter to The Horn Book Review, saying that her own daughter would turn "quite nasty" upon finishing the book. Roald Dahl responded to Cameron's criticisms by noting the classics she had cited would not be well received by contemporary children.
The cover art for Penguin UK's Modern Classics 50th Anniversary Edition of the book, published in September 2014, received criticism as being creepy, irrelevant, and age inappropriate.
Adaptations
In addition to spawning several sequels, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has frequently been adapted for other media, including games, radio, the screen, and stage, most often as plays or musicals for children - often titled Willy Wonka or Willy Wonka, Jr. and almost always featuring musical numbers by all the main characters (Wonka, Charlie, Grandpa Joe, Violet, Veruca, etc.); many of the songs are revised versions from the 1971 film.
- The book was first made into a feature film as a musical, titled Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), directed by Mel Stuart, produced by David L. Wolper, and starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka, character actor Jack Albertson as Grandpa Joe, and Peter Ostrum as Charlie Bucket. The film had an estimated budget of $2.9 million but grossed only $4 million and was considered a box-office disappointment. Exponential home video and DVD sales, as well as repeated television airings, resulted in the film's subsequently becoming a cult classic. Concurrently with the 1971 film, the Quaker Oats Company introduced a line of candies whose marketing uses the book's characters and imagery.
- The BBC produced an adaptation for Radio 4 in the early 1980s.
- In 1985, the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory video game was released for the ZX Spectrum by developer Soft Options Ltd and publisher Hill MacGibbon.
- Another film version, titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka, Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket, Deep Roy as the Oompa-Loompas, Philip Wiegratz as Augustus Gloop, and Geoffrey Holder as the Narrator, was a hit, grossing about $470 million worldwide with an estimated budget of $150 million. The 1971 and 2005 films are consistent with the written work to varying degrees. The Burton film greatly expanded Willy Wonka's personal back-story borrowing many themes and elements from the book's sequel. Both films heavily expanded the personalities of the four bad children and their parents from the limited descriptions in the book.
- A video game, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory based on Burton's adaptation, was released on 11 July 2005.
- On 1 April 2006, the British theme park, Alton Towers, opened a family attraction themed around the story. 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 enter one of two glass elevators, where they join Willy Wonka as they travel around the factory, eventually shooting up and out through the glass roof.
- The Estate of Roald Dahl sanctioned an operatic adaptation called The Golden Ticket. It was written by American composer Peter Ash and British librettist Donald Sturrock. The Golden Ticket has completely original music and was commissioned by American Lyric Theater, Lawrence Edelson (producing artistic director), and Felicity Dahl. The opera received its world premiere at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis on 13 June 2010, in a co-production with American Lyric Theater and Wexford Festival Opera.
- A musical based on the novel, titled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory premiered at the West End's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in May 2013 and officially opened on 25 June. The show is directed by Sam Mendes, with new songs by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, and stars Douglas Hodge as Willy Wonka. The production broke records for weekly ticket sales. Coincidentally, Hodge was also the voice of a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory audiobook, as part of a package of Roald Dahl CDs read by celebrities.
- In October 2016, Variety reported that Warner Bros has acquired the rights to the Willy Wonka character from the Roald Dahl Estate and is planning a new film centred around the eccentric character with David Heyman producing with the Dahl Estate manager Michael Siegel; Kevin McCormick is executive producing and Simon Rich is penning the script while Courtenay Valenti and Jon Gonda are overseeing the project for the studio. In February 2018, Paul King entered final negotiations to direct the film.
- A direct-to-video animated crossover film called Tom and Jerry: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was released in 2017.
Editions
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has undergone numerous editions and been illustrated by numerous artists.
Books
- 1964, OCLC 9318922 (hardcover, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., original, first US edition, illustrated by Joseph Schindelman)
- 1967, ISBN 9783125737600 (hardcover, George Allen & Unwin, original, first UK edition, illustrated by Faith Jaques)
- 1973, ISBN 0-394-81011-2 (hardcover, revised Oompa Loompa edition)
- 1976, ISBN 0-87129-220-3 (paperback)
- 1980, ISBN 0-553-15097-9 (paperback, illustrated by Joseph Schindelman)
- 1985, ISBN 0-14-031824-0 (paperback, illustrated by Michael Foreman)
- 1987, ISBN 1-85089-902-9 (hardcover)
- 1988, ISBN 0-606-04032-3 (prebound)
- 1992, ISBN 0-89966-904-2 (library binding, reprint)
- 1995 (illustrated by Quentin Blake)
- 1998, ISBN 0-14-130115-5 (paperback)
- 2001, ISBN 0-375-81526-0 (hardcover)
- 2001, ISBN 0-14-131130-4 (illustrated by Quentin Blake)
- 2002, ISBN 0-060-51065-X (audio CD read by Eric Idle)
- 2003, ISBN 0-375-91526-5 (library binding)
- 2004, ISBN 0-14-240108-0 (paperback)
- ISBN 0-8488-2241-2 (hardcover)
- 2011, ISBN 978-0-14-310633-3 (paperback), Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, cover by Ivan Brunetti
- 2014, (hardcover, Penguin UK/Modern Classics, 50th anniversary edition)
- 2014, (hardcover, Penguin UK/Puffin celebratory golden edition, illustrated by Sir Quentin Blake)
- 2014, (double-cover paperback)
50th anniversary cover controversy
The cover photo of the 50th anniversary edition, published by Penguin Modern Classics for sale in the UK and aimed at the adult market received widespread commentary and criticism. The cover is a photo of a heavily made up young girl seated on her mother's knee and wearing a doll-like expression, taken by the photographers Sofia Sanchez and Mauro Mongiello as part of a photo shoot for a 2008 fashion article in a French magazine, for a fashion article titled "Mommie Dearest." In addition to writing that "the image seemingly has little to do with the beloved children's classic", reviewers and commenters in social media (such as posters on the publisher's Facebook page) have said the art evokes Lolita, Valley of the Dolls, and JonBenet Ramsey; looks like a scene from Toddlers & Tiaras; and is "misleading," "creepy," "sexualized," "grotesque," "misjudged on every level," "distasteful and disrespectful to a gifted author and his work," "pretentious," "trashy", "outright inappropriate," "terrifying," "really obnoxious," and "weird & kind of paedophilic."
The publisher explained its objective in a blog post accompanying the announcement about the jacket art: "This new image . . . looks at the children at the center of the story, and highlights the way Roald Dahl's writing manages to embrace both the light and the dark aspects of life." Additionally, Penguin Press's Helen Conford told the Bookseller: "We wanted something that spoke about the other qualities in the book," Penguin Press's Helen Conford told the Bookseller. "It's a children's story that also steps outside children's and people aren't used to seeing Dahl in that way." She continued: "[There is] a lot of ill feeling about it, I think because it's such a treasured book and a book which isn't really a 'crossover book'" As she acknowledged: "People want it to remain as a children's book."
The New Yorker describes what it calls this "strangely but tellingly misbegotten" cover design thusly: "The image is a photograph, taken from a French fashion shoot, of a glassy-eyed, heavily made-up little girl. Behind her sits, a mother figure, stiff and coiffed, casting an ominous shadow. The girl, with her long, perfectly waved platinum-blond hair and her pink feather boa, looks like a pretty and inert doll--" The article continues: "And if the Stepford daughter on the cover is meant to remind us of Veruca Salt or Violet Beauregarde, she doesn't: those badly behaved squirts are bubbling over with rude life." Moreover, writes Talbot, "The Modern Classics cover has not a whiff of this validation of childish imagination; instead, it seems to imply a deviant adult audience."
References
External links
- Official Roald Dahl website
- The Willy Wonka Candy Company
Deleted chapters
- "Fudge Mountain": Dahl, Roald (30 August 2014). "A previously unpublished chapter of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ("The Vanilla Fudge Room" is from an early draft of Roald Dahl's most famous novel. With new illustrations by Quentin Blake)". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 30 August 2014.
- "Fudge Mountain": "The Vanilla Fudge Room". Roald Dahl Archive. 2016. Retrieved 12 August 2016.
- "Spotty Powder": Jones, Miracle (2 February 2009). "'Spotty Powder,' the Lost Chapter from Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (blog)". The Fiction Circus. Retrieved 12 August 2016.
- "The Warming Candy Room": "The Warming Candy Room". Roald Dahl Archive. 2016. Retrieved 12 August 2016.
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