English 227 | Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Synopsis

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Charlie Bucket is your average underprivileged boy who lives with his parents and four grandparents.  As he is raised in this family, Charlie gets his most favorite thing in the world once a year on his birthday: a bar of chocolate.  The Bucket family lives in the very same town where the world’s most famous chocolatier, Willy Wonka, operates a mysterious factory.  From Grandpa Joe, Charlie learns that Willy Wonka closed the factory to stop spies from stealing his secret candy-making skills, but one day the factory started to produce chocolate and candy again without any workers entering or exiting the factory.

The adventure begins as Willy Wonka announces a world-wide contest where he will give five lucky children a tour of his chocolate factory. The lucky five are: Augustus, Veruca, Violet, Mike, and our protagonist Charlie.  As the tour progresses, the rotten and spoiled children meet their demise and are removed from the group one by one.  They leave the factory altered in some way and Charlie is the last child remaining.


As the novel ends, Willy Wonka finally reveals why he had opened his factory to five children while they fly in a glass elevator towards Charlie’s home. Willy Wonka was getting old and he knew he could not run the factory forever, so he needed an innocent and pure hearted child to become his successor.  In the end, Charlie was chosen and he reunites with his family as they all fly off in the great glass elevator into the sky.