Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

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

Synopsis

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.

Related Topics:
Charlie Bucket - Chocolate - Birthday

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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 flavour). 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.

Related Topics:
Willy Wonka - Ice cream - Chewing gum - Corporate espionage

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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 chocolate maker himself.

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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.

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Augustus Gloop, a very fat and gluttonous boy, was drinking from Wonka's chocolate river when he fell in and was sucked up by one of the pipes leading to the Fudge Room. Violet Beauregarde, an competetive, attention seeking little girl who has chewed the same piece 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 squeezed into her normal dimensions (although the bluish pigmentation is permanent). Veruca Salt, a selfish spoiled brat whose rich and weak willed parents 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 chocolate 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."

Related Topics:
Augustus Gloop - Violet Beauregarde - Blueberry - Infirmary - Veruca Salt - Spoiled brat - Squirrel - Mike Teavee - Giant

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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.

Related Topics:
Oompa Loompa - Cacao

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

Related Topics:
Lift - Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

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