Friday, July 17, 2020

Willy Wonka's Whammy

How Wonka's Wonka-Vite Exposed Granny's Greed

"Mr. Wonka shook his head sadly and passed a hand over his eyes. Had you been standing very close to him you would have heard him murmuring softly under his breath, 'Oh, deary deary me, here we go again...'" ~Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator


It is no great secret that Charlie Bucket was the most well behaved of the group of otherwise snotty children that visited Willy Wonka's marvelous Chocolate Factory. Compared to the gluttonous Augustus Gloop, the pretentious Violet Beauregarde, conceited Veruca Salt, and finally, Mike Teavee the television fiend, Charlie Bucket is an angel. The second the children and their chaperones step into the factory and the great doors close behind them, the reader is already certain that Charlie will come out on top.
But, as the other four children fall one by one into the horrid temptation of their greed, we realize that not all of them will come out entirely as they were. Whether the fate of these children horrifies, perplexes, or disturbs you, I very much doubt that their behavior did not, at the very least, exhaust you. For what exhausting children they are; how ill-behaved, how spoiled, and how awfully greedy.

Augustus Gloop, for example, is compared to a pig. When we are first introduced to him he is described to have

"great flabby folds of fat bulg(ing) out from every part of his body"

and a face like

"a monstrous ball of dough with two small greedy curranty eyes peering out upon the world" 

One might say that these horrid children got what they had coming for them, that their punishment serves them right. But they are only children, after all. Yet the book assures us that the alarming experiences they undergo while in the factory do not change them for the better. 

The Oompa Loompa's claim that

"however long (the) pig (aka Augustus Gloop) might live,
we're positive he'd never give
even the smallest bit of fun or happiness to anyone". 

A truly horrifying thing to say about a child. But even so, one is inclined to believe them. For Augustus Gloop, like the others, is, to put it shortly, an obnoxious child with little to redeem him beyond his youngness. If anything can, his inexperience may excuse his behavior.
One cannot say the same for the adults.

Upon reading the second tale of Charlie Bucket's adventures with the extraordinary Willy Wonka, I was surprised to be confronted with similar behavior, though this time its perpetrators were not four foolish children, but four foolish adults.

While Roald Dahl's stories feature many charming children much like Charlie, his adult characters are not nearly so pleasant. In fact, many are horrid, evil, and nefarious.

None of these things can be said about the kindhearted parents of Charlie Bucket, and indeed, there hardly ever was a sweeter set of grandparents than Charlie's. Till Grandma Georgina became the worst of the lot, that is.

If you don't believe me, simply read the chapter entitled "Good-Bye Georgina" in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator in which Grandma Georgina undergoes the most drastic transformation brought upon by greed. In this chapter, Willy Wonka reveals that his candy is capable of anything. It is, in fact, so marvelous that his Wonka-Vite, a candy which he claims is basically the "most valuable bottle of pills in the world", can actually make somebody younger. Each pill, Wonka explains, shaves exactly 20 years off your age.

The pills immediately bring out the worst in the four elderly folk. And despite Wonka's precautions, too many pills are swallowed. The cries of wonder quickly turn to screams as the grandparents won't stop aging backwards. Their age falls off them so far and so fast that they are reduced to helpless, quibbling babies. And she with the worst behavior, she who swallowed the pills most greedily, is reduced to nothing at all. Grandma Georgina swallowed a few pills too many, and aged backwards, right out of existence. 

In a way, it is not so much the shock of these harsh and drastic punishments that alarms us. Adults meet far more violent ends in other tales by Roald Dahl. When James' aunts get crushed by his giant peach, for example, it is not just the gruesome end that disturbs us, but that this end was actually deserved. Indeed, no children's story has ever dealt in catharsis, debasing human characters into caricatures of greed, cruelty, and depravity to the point that they actually deserve be indefinitely punished, even to die.

Dahl's un-corrupted children (usually the protagonist) are contrasted with these cruel adults and snotty youngsters, who are often comparable to animals, or worse, to monsters. Indeed, anyone who has had the misfortune of running from the tyrannical beast of a woman Miss Trunchbull or been stuck in a room full of bald children-eating witches cannot doubt that Dahl's stories are much more sinister than the average children's story. Yet these characters nonetheless resemble real adult and childish foolishry, exaggerated both by the perspective of a child and the scope of fiction.


Whatever else can be said about the adventures of Charlie Bucket, it becomes clear when Grandma Georgina disappears in the pit of her own greed that Willy Wonka has a harmatia of his own, a fatal mistake, a whammy, if you will, that corrupts those around him and curses his otherwise extraordinary existence. 

The golden ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that invites the five children to Wonka's factory promises them

"mystic and marvellous surprises that will entrance, delight, intrigue, astonish, and perplex beyond measure".

But it is no coincidence that four out of five children that visit the factory fall into the inevitable down fall brought on by their greed. Two out of four adults offered the chance to age backwards are reduced back to blubbering children, while another is eaten up completely. And, if Wonka's marvelous invention can bring out the worst in even the sweet grandparents of Charlie Bucket, well, it becomes all to clear why Willy Wonka shut himself up in his factory in the first place.

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