Individual Text Feature: "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a favorite tale. It is a story comprised of sinful children, magical candy, a golden ticket, and a golden boy. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is, in a way, a Cinderella story. Charlie goes from rags to riches after luckily finding a golden ticket. The culture of Willy Wonka and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is one of corporate greed and wealth disparity. Willy Wonka is a personified corporation. He is concerned with his own company’s hidden secrets, his glorified persona, and the oompa loompas that work for him as essential slaves. Moreover, the children he so methodically lures into his chocolate factory though a brilliant gambling scheme, so easily feed into the free market from which Willy Wonka thrives. Willy Wonka, like any corporation knows how to manipulate any and every given demographic. The story of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory depicts just how easily an adolescent can fall into a vicious trap, both as a winner of a golden ticket and as a reader.

Marx said that the proletariat trudges along capitalism. In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, oompa loompas trudge along the chocolate factory. First, we must look at the Chocolate Factory as a corporate entity like Pfizer. They are in it for the money, not for the patient’s well-being, or in this case, a child’s happiness. A corporation knows how to manipulate the minds of their consumers. Pfizer airing a commercial for heart medication during an episode of Jeopardy is no different from the candy man. Willy Wonka’s method of ‘inviting’ children into his chocolate factory is through mass-consumerism. In order to even find a golden ticket, one must purchase a candy bar. This desire and struggle to consume is evident as Charlie, the main character, who is poor, ensures that his money is spent on Willy Wonka’s chocolate. Willy Wonka, a corporation has already effectively infiltrated a child’s mind for profit.

While Charlie struggles to gather money to buy a chocolate bar and find a golden ticket, his fellow potential ticket winners face different socioeconomic realities. Veruca Salt for example has her father hire women to sort through thousands of chocolate bars. Veruca Salt and her family are at a clear financial advantage and thus have access to finding a ticket more easily. The same goes for other characters like Mike Teavee, a boy whose face is glued to a screen. Charlie and his peer consumers are part of a mass-consumerist culture that landed them all in a bizarre place: the chocolate factory.

The Chocolate Factory is portrayed as a magical place, made entirely of sugary goodness. This candy is a clear facade and reflective of corporate intentions. What is even more telling about the nature of the chocolate factory is the employment or perhaps enslavement of oompa loompas. The oompa loompas trudge along capitalism and are very clearly creatures at Willy Wonka’s disposal. They act as placeholders for replaceable employees, and Charlie, Veruca, Violet, Mike, and Augustus view as novelty items. This perpetuates disregard for working people, and it’s an extension of Willy Wonka’s greed.

Because of the mass-consumerist theme consistent throughout Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I intend to explore how this illustrated the characters. The portrayal of both deeply impoverished and extremely wealthy adolescents is critical to understanding how class plays a role in adolescent literature. Class division as a motif in characters not being able to relate to one another echoes what many children do experience. Wealth disparity is palpable, but it interestingly dissipates while in the Chocolate Factory. Despite Veruca’s family putting significantly more effort into getting a golden ticket, they are treated the same.

Readers are taught to feel strongly about Charlie’s fascination as well as Veruca’s brattiness. I also may explore the notion of gender in the context of the character’s portrayal. Veruca and Violet are especially bratty and also experience punishment in the novel. More interestingly, within the Chocolate Factory, each character is punished for their rebellion. This punishment within a corporate setting draws the parallel between character punishment in a corporate setting and a country’s working class. It’s the breaking of a complex social contract that is inherently reliant on a capitalist system.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is an extremely symbolic novel and can be read through many lenses like class, gender, consumerism, etc.. I may also explore consumerism through a post-war consumerist lens. Roald Dahl wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in the 1960’s, the post-war era. The propensity to consume during the post-war era marked the beginning of a new industry. This new industry is fascinating and unique at the time that the book takes place, which perhaps motivated the writing of the novel. If Charlie’s poverty or Veruca’s wealth are results of wartime activity, then the novel could be read much differently. Additionally, the outside aesthetic of the Chocolate Factory is reminiscent of the Industrial Revolution. The factory functions very systematically and perhaps this is supposed to reveal something to the adolescents in the novel. Could Willy Wonka inviting people into his chocolate factory be a call to action; a way of begging the public to act upon this mass consumerism.

When dealing with the text, I intend to deeply evaluate each character’s dialogue and the portrayal of their background. I think that the tone of the book will be instrumental in determining the impact of the adolescent characters’ actions. The tone will also be instrumental in determining the interpretation of the novel to an adolescent audience. The mass-consumerist argument I will make may be supplemented by other post-war novels that deal with adolescents and material desire.