Roald Dahl: Charlie and the chocolate factory

Biography: Roald Dahl was born in Wales on September the 13th. His parents were Norwegian. His most successful children's books are Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Boy, Going Solo, Someone Like You, The Hitch-Hiker and Mr Botibol. Roald Dahl is a brilliant storyteller. Suspense plays a major part in the plots and keeps the reader captivated until the final few lines, when a reversal of the situation often takes place. His style is a mixture of biting irony, black humour and sensibility.
Publisher: The book was made and printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk. Filmset in Monophoto Photina, 1985.

Theme: If you are polite, you will achieve more.
Genre: Fiction, Action Adventure, Humorous Fiction
Setting: The story is enacted in the Mr. Willy Wonka’s factory and in the house of the Buckets.


Plot:
Charlie Bucket is a little boy, who comes from an extremely poor family. He lives with his parents and four grandparents in a small, single-roomed house. His father is only person in family, who has a job. After loosing it, the family is practically starving to death. Charlie's greatest love in his life is chocolate. He receives a bar once a year, on his birthday. Once, Willy Wonka, the greatest manufacturer of chocolate in the world, owner of the largest and the most exciting chocolate factory in the whole universe, decided to allow 5 children to visit his factory.

I, Willy Wonka, have decided to allow five children — just five, mind you, and no more — to visit my factory this year. These lucky five will be shown around personally by me, and they will be allowed to see all the secrets and the magic of my factory. Then, at the end of the tour, as a special present, all of them will be given enough chocolates and sweets to last them for the rest of their lives! So watch out for the Golden Tickets! Five Golden Tickets have been printed on golden paper, and these five Golden Tickets have been hidden underneath the ordinary wrapping paper of five ordinary bars of chocolate. These five chocolate bars may be anywhere — in any shop in any street in any town in any country in the world — upon any counter where Wonka's Sweets are sold. And the five lucky finders of these five Golden Tickets are the only ones who will be allowed to visit my factory and see what it's like now inside! Good luck to you all, and happy hunting! (Signed Willy Wonka.)
Children are allowed to bring with them either one or two members of their own family to look after them. The four tickets were soon found by four not very well behaved children. There was a very little chance that Charlie could find the last one. Once, when Charlie was walking back home, he found a fifty-pence piece. He decided to buy one luscious bar of chocolate and eat it all up and to take the rest of the money straight back home and give to his mother. But as he was extremely hungry, he bought one more bar of the chocolate.
Charlie picked it up and tore off the wrapper . . . and suddenly . . . from underneath the wrapper . . . there came a brilliant flash of gold.
Charlie's heart stood still.
'It's a Golden Ticket!' screamed the shopkeeper, leaping about a foot in the air. 'You've got a Golden Ticket! You've found the last Golden Ticket! Hey, would you believe it! Come and look at this, everybody! The kid's found Wonka's last Golden Ticket! There it is! It's right here in his hands!'

When Charlie came home, initially nobody believed. But it was truth. Charlie was the last owner of the Golden ticket. The great day was the first day in the month of February. And that was already the next day! The family decided that grandpa Joe will go with Charlie, because he was the oldest one in the family and he seemed to know more about Willy Wonka’s chocolate than the others did.
The factory was more incredible that anyone could imagine. The bigger part of the factory was under the ground, because there was not enough space for it on the surface. In the factory there worked the "Oompa Loompas"- a group of people from Loompaland who agreed to shift and become Wonka's workforce because of his ability to supply unlimited quantities of their greatest delicacy, the cocoa bean, the raw ingredient in chocolate.
In the factory there were many extraordinary things and rooms, like the chocolate river, the inventing room or a storage that stored hair cream. But there was not enough time to see everything. By the time, four children misbehaved one by one and ended up in bizarre, near-fatal predicaments, which required removing them from the group.
Augustus Gloop, an enormously fat glutton, was drinking from a lake of chocolate when he was sucked up by one of the pipes leading to the Fudge Room. Violet Beauregarde, who has chewed the same piece of gum for months, tried an experimental piece of three-course-dinner gum and turned into a giant blueberry. Veruca Salt, a spoiled brat whose rich father gives her anything she wants, was thrown down a garbage chute by squirrels trained to find and get rid of the "bad nuts". Mike Teevee, who spends all day watching Westerns on television, was miniaturized by a television camera designed to deliver candy bars by television.
At the end only Charlie left. 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 whole factory.

Characteristics:
Charlie: He was a young boy came from a poor family. He really liked chocolate, but his family could afford to buy him it only once a year. Charlie is the kind, sweet, caring boy most children's book heroes are.

Mr. Willy Wonka: An eccentric owner of the magnificent candy factory.
And what an extraordinary little man he was!
He had a black top hat on his head.
He wore a tail coat made of a beautiful plum-coloured velvet.
His trousers were bottle green.
His gloves were pearly grey.
And in one hand he carried a fine gold-topped walking cane.
Covering his chin, there was a small, neat, pointed black beard — a goatee. And his eyes — his eyes were most marvellously bright. They seemed to be sparkling and twinkling at you all the time. The whole face, in fact, was alight with fun and laughter.

Atmosphere: At the beginning of the book there was an atmosphere of poverty, but when they were in the factory, there was an atmosphere of marvellous place, you could feel like you were in the other, very pleasant world. I guess that many readers of this book ate a chocolate during the reading this book.

Narrator: The narrator is in the third person (probably the author himself). He is everywhere, where Charlie occurs, so we know only that, what happen in Charlie’s surroundings. He is objective and gives us some information, like characterizations of persons or some story information.

What was interesting for me: Actually, there wasn’t anything interesting for me in this book. Very superficial story, without a real plot, almost everything was easy to predict. I think it is suitable for kids, but not for me. Despite I did not understand some words, this book is quite easy to read, so I recommend it to someone, who really likes fairy-tales.