Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
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| 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 |
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| 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 | 0-394-91011-7 |
| Followed by | Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator |
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) is a children's book by Norwegian-British author Roald Dahl. This 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 1967, 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.
The story was originally inspired when Roald Dahl attended school. Cadbury sent 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 often tried to steal trade secrets by sending spies into each other's companies, 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.[1]
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[edit] Synopsis
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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. His Grandpa Joe knows a great deal about Wonka's factory. As time passed, Wonka began to suspect that spies were stealing his recipes to give to rival firms, so he fired all his workers and announced that he was going out of business forever. The factory has since resumed operations, but the gates are still locked and no one knows who works for Wonka now.
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. Charlie and four children (gluttonous Augustus Gloop, spoiled Veruca Salt, gum-chewing 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, one child after another falls victim to his/her particular vices and is removed.
Charlie is the only child who does not misbehave throughout the tour. Seeing that he is the only one left, Wonka announces that he has "won" the entire factory and will take over the company after Wonka retires. The two board a special glass elevator along with Grandpa Joe, who has accompanied Charlie on the tour, and they are propelled up from the factory, the story continuing in the sequel: Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator.
[edit] 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,[2] 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".[3] Ursula K. Le Guin voiced her support for this assessment in a letter to Cameron.[4] 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.
[edit] Main Rooms
There are four main rooms that the tour goes through, losing one child at a time.
[edit] Chocolate Room
The Chocolate Room is the first room that the tour goes through. 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 even spotty candy cubes. The main icon of the room is the Chocolate River, where the chocolate is mixed and churned by the waterfall. 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; Augustus Gloop is sucked into one such pipe after falling into the river while drinking from it.
[edit] 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 ol' 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, "Tomato Soup, Roast Beef & 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 pimple". The tour then leaves the Inventing Room.
[edit] 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 walnuts are thrown down a garbage chute which leads to an incinerator. Veruca Salt desperatly 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 into 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 down the garbage chute, just as they did to his daughter.
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.
[edit] The Television Room
The Television Room is home to Wonka's latest invention, Television Chocolate, where they take a giant Wonka Bar and shrink it, then send it to 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 tries to even send himself through television, leading to him shrinking down to be no more than an inch high. Wonka suggests that he is put through the "Gum Strecher," where he tests the strechiness 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 movie version, Mike Teavee is stretched by the Taffy Puller.
[edit] 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"'
- '"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 Nurseries"'
- '"Luminous Lollies For In Bed At Night"'
- '"Magic Hand-Fudge--When You Hold It In Your Handd, 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 Colors"'
- '"Stickjaw for Talkative Parents"'
- '"Strawberry-Juice Water Pistols"'
- '"Square Candies That Look Round"'
- '"The Rock-Candy Mine--10,000 Feet Deep"'
- '"Toffee-Apple Trees For Planting Out In Your Garden--All Sizes"'
- '"Wriggle-Sweets That Wriggle Delight-Fully In Your Tummy After Swallowing"'
[edit] The Original Story
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). That 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.
[edit] Lost chapter
In 2005, a short chapter which had been removed during the editing of the book circulated, entitled "Spotty Powder", was published. The chapter featured the elimination of Miranda Piker, a "teacher's pet" with a headmaster father. Wonka introduces the group to a new candy that will make children temporarily appear 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 storm into the secret room where it is made. Two screams are heard, and Wonka agrees with the distraught Mrs. Piker that they were surely ground into Spotty Powder, and were indeed needed all along for the recipe, as "We’ve got to use one or two schoolmasters occasionally or it wouldn’t work." He then reassures Mrs. Piker that he was joking. Mrs. Piker is escorted to the boiler room by the Oompa-Loompas, who sing a short song about how delicious Miranda's classmates will find her.[5]
[edit] Derivations
The book was first made into a feature film as a musical titled Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, 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. Released worldwide on June 30, 1971 and distributed by Paramount Pictures, the film had an estimated budget of $3 M. The movie grossed only $4 M and was considered a box-office flop. Like many films based on books, there were several notable differences in the film from the book. For example, Charlie's father did not appear in the film as he was dead, the fake ticket was the "final" ticket and was "found" by a Paraguayan man rather than the "second" ticket being "found" by a Russian woman, and the other four children were accompanied around the factory by just one of their parents rather than both parents.
Another film version, entitled Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and directed by Tim Burton, was released on July 15, 2005; this version starred Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka and Freddie Highmore as Charlie Bucket. The Brad Grey production was a hit, grossing about $470 M worldwide with an estimated budget of $150 M. It was distributed by Warner Bros. this time. The 1971 and 2005 films are consistent with the written work to varying degrees. 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 from the limited description in the book. There were further differences in this film version from the book, including the fact that Mike Teavee was also obsessed by computer games as well as television (the book pre-dates home computers).
It has also been produced by Swedish Television as still drawings narrated by Ernst-Hugo Järegård.
Concurrently with the 2005 film, a line of candies was introduced in North America, Europe and Oceania that uses the book's characters and imagery for its marketing. Presently sold in in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the candies are produced in the United States, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Brazil, by Nestlé.
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 PlayStation 2, Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo DS, Wii, 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 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 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.
[edit] 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)
[edit] 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)
[edit] References
- ^ Bathroom Readers' Institute. "You're My Inspiration." Uncle John's Fast-Acting Long-Lasting Bathroom Reader. Ashland:Bathroom Reader's Press, 2005. 13.
- ^ John Rowe Townsend. Written for Children. Kestrel Books. 1974.
- ^ Cameron, Eleanor (1972), "McLuhan, Youth, and Literature: Part I", The Horn Book Magazine, http://www.hbook.com/magazine/articles/1970s/oct72_cameron.asp, retrieved on 2008-09-27
- ^ Le Guin, Ursula K. (April 1973), "Letters to the Editor (on McLuhan, Youth, and Literature: Part I)", The Horn Book Magazine, http://www.hbook.com/magazine/letters/apr73.asp, retrieved on 2008-09-27
- ^ "The secret ordeal of Miranda Piker". Times Online. 2005-07-23. pp. 1-3. http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article546539.ece. Retrieved on 2008-09-27.
[edit] External links
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