Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Themes
Awe and Amazement
If only real life were as awe-inspiring and amazing as life in Willy Wonka's factory. Every chapter of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has a new and fascinating invention. But we're not meant to...
Foolishness and Folly
There certainly are a lot of fools in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The children make uninformed, unwise, rash choices, and they pay the price. Their parents, too, are foolish, because they ca...
Greed
It's one of the seven deadly sins, and for a reason. Greed, especially in this story, makes people do not-so-smart things (like fall in a chocolate river or build a violent, faulty robot). You'll n...
Family
Family is clearly the most important thing to our little Charlie Bucket. How do we know? For one thing, he's willing to share his birthday chocolate bar with all six members of his family, even tho...
Poverty
There's no doubt about it: our protagonist is poor. Dahl never lets us forget it. Why make him so poor? Why not make Charlie just be an average kid in suburbia, with a dog and a wagon and a backyar...
Appearances
By the end of the story, we've never seen a stranger looking group of people in our lives. There's Mr. Wonka, with his crazy outfit, looking down at all the other children, stretched, blue, and cov...
Madness
It's a mad, mad world in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Mr. Wonka's quirky. The Oompa-Loompas are nuts. Even Grandpa Joe, at times, seems a little bit loony. For all its madness, though, the ch...
Old Age
There's no doubt about it: the stars of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are children. But we think Grandpa Joe deserves at least a supporting actor nomination. What would Charlie's tour of the fa...
Rules and Order
We might think of a fantasyland like the chocolate factory as a place that doesn't have any rules (there are square treats that look round, mischievous Oompa-Loompas, and all kinds of logic-defying...