Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Is Published
"Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," published in September 1964, is a celebrated children's novel by British author Roald Dahl. The story follows Charlie Bucket, a young boy from a poor family, who wins a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Willy Wonka's mysterious chocolate factory after finding a golden ticket in a candy bar. The factory, filled with fantastical sweets and staffed by Oompa-Loompas, serves as a backdrop for Charlie's adventure, where he encounters whimsical but perilous situations that befall other children who indulge their vices. Dahl's work is noted for its sly humor, as well as its themes of virtue and the consequences of greed and disobedience.
The book achieved remarkable popularity, leading to several adaptations including films, a stage musical, and even merchandise like candy. While it has garnered acclaim, it has also faced criticism, particularly regarding its portrayal of the Oompa-Loompas and themes of race and class, prompting revisions in later editions. "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is now regarded as a classic of children's literature, influencing culture through phrases like "golden ticket" and inspiring various creative adaptations over the decades.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Is Published
DATE September 1964
Roald Dahl’s second children’s book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, became tremendously popular with children. The book has a sly wit, rebels against adults and adulthood, and features delightfully gruesome perils. The novel was later adapted into multiple popular films and has inspired a popular song and a line of candies.
LOCALE New York, New York
Key Figures
- Roald Dahl (1916–90), a British novelist and short-story writer
- Eleanor Cameron(1912–96), a Canadian children’s book author
- Ann Watkins (1885–1967), a literary agent
- Joseph Schindelman (b. 1944), a children’s book illustrator
Summary of Event
In September 1964, Alfred A. Knopf published what rapidly became one of the best-loved children’s books of the twentieth century, British author Roald Dahl’s children’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dahl’s second children’s novel. His first, James and the Giant Peach, was published in 1961.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was successful despite the publication in 1964 of other children’s books that would become popular as well. These included Ian Fleming’s Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Emily Neville’s It’s Like This, Cat, and Maia Wojciechowska’s Shadow of a Bull, among others.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which was written to entertain Dahl’s disabled son Theo, was a phenomenal commercial success. Critic Elaine Moss wrote in The New York Times Book Review that the work “is the funniest children’s book I have read in years; not just funny but shot through with a zany pathos that touches the young heart.”
The Chinese edition included the largest number of printings of any book at the time. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was illustrated by Joseph Schindelman. Schindelman was later replaced by Quentin Blake.
Dahl’s book agent was Ann Watkins, who had represented Dahl in his earlier work. She would remain his representative throughout the rest of his career.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tells the story of an impoverished child, Charlie Bucket, who lives with his parents and four grandparents, and who is allowed to buy a candy bar once each year on his birthday. One day, Charlie uses money found in the street to buy a candy bar and in doing so wins a trip to the candy bar’s manufacturer, the factory of Willy Wonka, an eccentric town figure who has not been seen in years.
Entering the factory with five other children, their guardians, and his Grandpa Joe, Charlie finds himself transported into a magical place that makes fantastic candies. The factory is staffed by Oompa-Loompas, tiny workers who ingest only cacao beans and who Wonka has imported to keep his secrecy and protect his ideas from other candy manufacturers. Each room of the factory is dedicated to a specific job.
As the book progresses, the other visiting children give in to their impulses and are removed from the story: Augustus Gloop falls into a river of chocolate while attempting to drink from it; Veruca Salt is dragged away by squirrels who deem her “a bad nut” and throw her down a garbage chute; Violet Beauregarde turns into a blueberry and is taken away to be “dejuiced”; and Mike Teavee is inadvertently shrunk to the size of a figure on a television screen. Wonka reveals to Charlie—the last child left, and the only obedient one—that the contest involves more than a tour of the factory. By being the only child left after the tour, he has become Wonka’s inheritor and successor. Ascending into Wonka’s special glass elevator, Charlie, Grandpa Joe, and Wonka travel to the Bucket house, pick up the rest of Charlie’s family, and launch themselves into space.
The book invokes two of Dahl’s favorite themes: the reward of virtue while those giving into vices are punished, and the triumph of children over the forces of the “grown-up” world. Like many of Dahl’s works, it invokes the larger themes of existence, which constitutes much of its appeal to children.
In the creation of the book and its array of magical confectionary, Dahl had drawn partially on his experiences as a child: his discussions with other children regarding the nature of candies such as gobstoppers and sherbets, and his memories of occasions when English manufacturer Cadbury would send boxes of new chocolate to his school for testing. Dahl daydreamed of inventing a new candy bar to be manufactured by Cadbury, and these dreams had provided the impetus for the story.
A decade after its release, the book drew criticism from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), from children’s author Eleanor Cameron, and from others for its portrayal of the Oompa-Loompas as dark-skinned African pygmies who take their wages in the form of cacao beans and consider Wonka a benevolent master. Cameron also decried the book as showing a “phony presentation of poverty” and objected to the sadistic overtones of the punishments to which the children are subjected. Cameron and Dahl engaged in several heated debates in print over the nature of the book.
In response to the charges of racism, Dahl changed some of the text, and several of the illustrations were changed for subsequent editions. The new version describes the Oompa-Loompas as having long golden-brown hair and white skin and coming from Loompaland, a fictional country, instead of Africa. The new version was introduced in 1973.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory won the New England Round Table of Children’s Librarians Award in 1972 and the Surrey School Award in 1973. In 1973, Allen & Unwin published a UK edition of the book that featured the changes made to the revised US edition.
Significance
Children loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, as well as its sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, which Dahl wrote in 1972. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now one of the classics of children’s literature. The phrase “golden ticket,” taken from the contest in the book, passed into general use and came to mean an exclusive and highly valued opportunity.
The book has inspired numerous adaptations as well. In 1971, it was adapted into the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which featured actor Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka and the song “The Candyman Can”; the latter became a signature tune for Sammy Davis Jr. That critically acclaimed film proved a commercial flop but ultimately became a cult classic. The story was also produced by Swedish television as an animated series narrated by Ernst-Hugo Järeg�rd. In July 2005, another film adaptation, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as the eccentric Wonka, was released. An award-winning musical stage adaptation also ran on Broadway from 2017 to 2018. A 2023 musical film, Wonka, directed by Paul King and starring Timothée Chalamet in the titular role, aimed to tell the backstory of the central figure Willy Wonka rather than provide a straight adaptation of the book. It opened to mixed critical reviews but earned nearly $200 million at the box office within seven weeks.
The book’s sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, which features the Bucket family’s adventures in outer space, inspired its own brand of candy, named for Wonka and manufactured by Nestlé until the late 2000s. Other Wonka-themed merchandise has included watches, eyeglasses, sneakers, toothpaste, pancakes, and even perfume. The book was also been made into a video game for several platforms, including Nintendo’s GameCube, the Sony’s PlayStation 2, and Microsoft’s Xbox. It was also made into a fun-house ride at the British theme park Alton Towers.
Bibliography
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