Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Summary, it 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.
The story was originally inspired by Roald Dahl's experience of chocolate companies during his schooldays at Repton School in Derbyshire. 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—inspiring Dahl's idea for the recipe-thieving spies (such as Wonka's rival Slugworth) depicted in the book. 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.
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| Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Summary |
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Summary
Our story starts out with an introduction of the main characters: Charlie Bucket's family. Charlie, his parents, and his four grandparents all live together in a small house. They're poor, hungry, cold, and pretty much in dire straits. The one thing that brightens Charlie's life is the chocolate factory, owned by Willy Wonka, that's right in the neighborhood. That, and the one chocolate bar a year he gets on his birthday.
Grandpa Joe seems to know a lot about Wonka's factory and he tells Charlie a bunch of stories: about a chocolate palace Mr. Wonka built, and about how he had to close his factory down because of spies stealing his recipes. During one of these stories, Charlie's dad comes in with the news that Mr. Wonka will be opening up his factory to five lucky children who can find Golden Tickets in Wonka chocolate bars. Contest!.
On his birthday, Charlie's whole family hopes that his chocolate bar will contain a Golden ticket, and guess what? It doesn't. (Did we trick you?) Grandpa Joe even gives him some saved-up money to buy one more. Still nothing. One day, while Charlie is walking home from school, hungry and cold, he finds some money on the ground and uses it to buy chocolate. And sure enough, without even expecting it, he finds his golden ticket.
Charlie and his Grandpa Joe go to the factory on the day of the tour and boy is it marvelous. There's a room made entirely of edible things (with a chocolate river), and little people called Oompa-Loompas who run the factory. And that's only the beginning! One by one, the other four children on the tour cause some major trouble and are carried away. Augustus Gloop falls into the chocolate river while trying to drink from it, Violet Beauregarde eats some magic gum that turns her into a blueberry, Veruca Salt tries to steal a worker squirrel and ends up down a garbage chute, and Mike Teavee is shrunken down when he tries to send himself through television.
Charlie is the only child who doesn't cause trouble, and Willy Wonka tells him he won. Wait, what did he win? The whole stinkin' factory. Mr. Wonka wants someone to take over for him when he gets old and he chooses Charlie. That's right, the whole factory is his! They shoot through the roof on the glass elevator, go get Charlie's family, and bring them back to the factory, where they'll never go hungry again.
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Questions about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Plot
What does Charlie and the Chocolate Factory teach children? Here are some things we can learn from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Learn to follow directions. Augustus Gloop, Violet Beauregarde, Veruca Salt, and Mike Teavee all disregard instructions to satisfy their own wants and suffer horrible consequences. Even Charlie and Grandpa Joe do not listen.
What is dark about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Although the later film adaptation avoided the controversy of some of Dahl's nastiest humor, one detail in the novel and in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory may have suggested the chocolate maker was a pedophile. The Inventing Room had wallpaper made of different berry flavors.
What is the main message of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? For children, the main message is very clear in the story: good children are rewarded for their deeds and acts and bad children are not.
What does chocolate symbolize in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Chocolate Symbol Analysis. The way that different characters consume or think of chocolate correlates to their wealth and privilege. For instance, Charlie Bucket and his family are extremely poor, so the only chocolate Charlie ever gets is a single candy bar every year on his birthday.
Why Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a good story? Great ideas, well crafted prose, and an understatement of its morality make Charlie and the Chocolate Factory a modern fairy tale that will likely be popular for years to come, among children and any adults who aren't entirely devoid of any sense of magic.
What is the scariest scene in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? The Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory tunnel is still considered one of the creepiest scenes in a children's movie, and it's not hard to see why. While the imagery that appears is hardly on the same level as the flashes of Hell from Event Horizon, it still has a very unsettling effect.
What happens to each child in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Augustus gets sucked up a pipe after falling into the chocolate river; Violet swells up becoming a giant blueberry; Veruca falls down a garbage chute; and Mike is shrunk to the size of a chocolate bar. The Oompa Loompas sing a song of morality after each disposal.