Chocolate Craving

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, chocolate is constructed as a desired luxury. On a diet of: “bread and margarine for breakfast, boiled potatoes and cabbage for lunch, and cabbage soup for supper…[though bland], The Buckets, of course, didn’t starve”. Nevertheless, the family “went about from morning till night with a horrible empty feeling in their tummies” (16). Physically, the family could have been hungry for more substantial food. However, instead of longing for nutritious foods i.e. steaks or fish, Charlie longs for chocolate “more than anything else” (ibid). The “horrible empty feeling” might be interpreted as a manifestation of the insatiable quality of capitalistic consumerism. Though bland, the diet of the family is able to sustain them. Economic theories would explain that unexplained emptiness as the result of possessing ‘unlimited wants’. Due to the family’s ‘limited resource’ this unmet want exists as a constant void within the individual. In other words, Charlie’s longing cannot be quantified as a true physical hunger but as a psychological manifestation of his consumerist desire for more.

In contrast to Augustus Gloop’s excessive consumption of chocolate bars and Veruca Salt’s “hundreds and thousands” bars of uneaten chocolate, another interpretation of Charlie’s situation could be that of social inequality (40). For “Little Charlie, the lover of chocolate” chocolate is a luxury that his family could afford “only once a year, on his birthday”. We are told that Charlie goes through “pure torture” “watching other children munching bars of creamy chocolate right in front of him” (16-17). Chocolate as the object of Charlie’s hunger is something that is accessible to other people but not to him because of economic constraints. The contrast between the standard of living of the rich and the poor is not unique to the narrative but a phenomenon common throughout the world where social goods such as education, are luxuries inaccessible to certain impoverished sections of society but abused and wasted by wealthy capitalists. Charlie’s longing, is relatable to Dahl’s young readers. Like Charlie, chocolate is likely a food that Dahl’s young readers would hope to indulge in. The plot is used as a sympathetic device that highlights the problems of social inequality brought about by the unequal distribution of wealth.

This is a distinctively Marxist perspective that envisions continually increasing economic and social gaps between workers and capitalists. Mr. Bucket who works in a factory screwing caps unto toothpaste is a clear representative of an exploited, alienated worker. On the other hand, Mr. Salt who owns a Ford-like factory where “all day long” women sit there “yanking the paper off those bars of chocolate full speed ahead from morning till night” is quite clearly a capitalist (40). Charlie’s eventual victory over the other privileged children and inheriting the factory mirrors the Marxist prophesy that a future generation of workers will one day seize the means of production. It would be too great a generalization to label Dahl as Communist but it would be valid to note that Dahl often attempts to redress social inequalities in his stories.