Charlieand 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.[1]
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is frequently ranked among the most popular works in children's literature.[5][6][7] In 2012, Charlie Bucket brandishing a Golden Ticket appeared in a Royal Mail first class stamp in the UK.[8] The novel was first published in the U.S. by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in 1964 and in the U.K. by George Allen & Unwin 11 months later. The book's sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, was written by Dahl in 1971 and published in 1972. Dahl had also planned to write a third book in the series but never finished it.[9]
The book has also been adapted into two major motion pictures: Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory in 1971 and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in 2005. A stand-alone film exploring Willy Wonka's origins titled Wonka was released in 2023. The book has spawned a media franchise with multiple video games, theatrical productions and merchandise.
Charlie Bucket lives in poverty with his parents and grandparents in a town which is home to a world-famous chocolate factory. One day, Charlie's bedridden Grandpa Joe tells him about Willy Wonka, the factory's eccentric owner, and all of his fantastical candies. Rival chocolatiers sent in spies to steal his recipes, forcing Wonka to close the factory and disappear. He reopened the factory years later, but the gates remain locked and nobody knows who is providing the factory with its workforce.
The next day, the newspaper announces that Wonka has hidden five Golden Tickets in Wonka Bars; the finders of these tickets will be invited to come and tour the factory. The first four tickets are found by gluttonous Augustus Gloop, spoiled Veruca Salt, gum-chewing Violet Beauregarde, and television addict Mike Teavee. One day, Charlie buys a Wonka Bar with some money he found in the snow; the bar contains the fifth and final ticket. Upon hearing the news, Grandpa Joe regains his mobility and volunteers to accompany Charlie to the factory.
On the day of the tour, Wonka welcomes the five children and their parents inside the factory, a wonderland of confectionery creations that defy logic. They also meet the Oompa-Loompas, a race of impish humanoids who help him operate the factory. During the tour, the other four children give in to their impulses and are ejected from the tour in darkly comical ways: Augustus falls into the Chocolate River and is sucked up a pipe, Violet turns into a giant blueberry after chewing an experimental stick of three-course dinner gum, Veruca and her parents fall down a garbage chute after the former tries to capture one of the nut-testing squirrels, and Mike is shrunk down to the size of a chocolate bar after misusing the Television Chocolate device despite Wonka's warnings. The Oompa-Loompas sing about the children's misbehaviour each time disaster strikes.
With only Charlie remaining, Wonka congratulates him for "winning" the factory. Wonka explains that the whole tour was designed to help him find a worthy heir to his business, and Charlie was the only child whose inherent genuineness passed the test. They ride the Great Glass Elevator and watch the other four children leave the factory before flying to Charlie's house, where Wonka invites the entire Bucket family to come and live with him in the factory.
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.[10][11]
In the first published edition, the Oompa-Loompas were described as African pygmies, and were drawn this way in the original printed edition.[10] After the announcement of a film adaptation sparked a statement from the NAACP, which expressed concern that the transportation of Oompa-Loompas to Wonka's factory resembled slavery, Dahl found himself sympathising with their concerns and published a revised edition.[10] In this edition, as well as the subsequent sequel, the Oompa-Loompas were drawn as being white and appearing similar to hippies, and the references to Africa were deleted.[10]
In 2023, publisher Puffin made more than eighty additional changes to the original text of the book, such as: removing every occurrence of the word fat (including referring to Augustus Gloop as "enormous" rather than "enormously fat" and greatly changing the words of his song); removing most references to the Oompa-Loompa's diminutive size and physical appearance and omitting descriptions of them living in trees and wearing deerskins and leaves; removing or changing the words mad, crazy, and queer; omitting many references to Mike Teavee's toy guns; and removing references to corporal punishment (such as changing "She needs a really good spanking" to "She needs a really good talking to" and "She wants a good kick in the pants" to "She needs to learn some manners").[12][13]
The Oompa-Loompa bowed and smiled, showing beautiful white teeth. His skin was almost pure black, and the top of his fuzzy head came just above the height of Mr Wonka's knee. He wore the usual deerskin slung over his shoulder.
The Oompa-Loompa bowed and smiled, showing beautiful white teeth. His skin was rosy-white, his hair was golden brown, and the top of his head came just above the height of Mr Wonka's knee. He wore the usual deerskin slung over his shoulder.
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[15] and the children faced more rooms and more temptations to test their self-control.[15][16] Some of the names of the children cut from the final work include:[17]
"Spotty Powder" was first published as a short story in 1973.[21][23] In 1998, it was included in the children's horror anthology Scary! Stories That Will Make You Scream edited by Peter Haining. The brief note before the story described the story as having been left out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory due to an already brimming number of misbehaving children characters in the tale. In 2005, The Times reprinted "Spotty Powder" as a "lost" chapter, saying that it had been found in Dahl's desk, written backwards in mirror writing (the same way that Leonardo da Vinci wrote in his journals).[16][24] Spotty Powder 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 interprets as screams. Mr. Wonka assures her (after making a brief joke where he claims that headmasters are one of the occasional ingredients) that it is only laughter. Exactly what happens to them is not revealed in the extract.[15][16]
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."[21][25] 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."[16]
In 2014, The Guardian revealed that Dahl had removed 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."[15] In what was originally chapter five in that version of the book, Charlie goes to the factory with his mother instead of Grandpa Joe as originally published. At this point, the chocolate factory tour is down to eight kids,[22][26] 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."[22]
The chapter dates back to an early draft with ten golden tickets, including one each for Miranda Grope and Augustus Pottle, who fell into the chocolate river prior to the events of "Fudge Mountain".[15][27] Augustus Pottle was routed to the Chocolate Fudge Room, not the Vanilla Fudge Room explored in this chapter,[22][26] and Miranda Grope ended up in the Fruit and Nuts Room.
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 100 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."[19]
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