Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

The narrator introduces two elderly people sitting in bed. They’re Grandpa Joe and Grandma Josephine, Mr. Bucket’s parents. The other two old people, also in bed, are Mrs. Bucket’s parents, Grandpa George and Grandma Georgina. Mr. and Mrs. Bucket have a son too, named Charlie. (Charlie is very pleased to meet the reader.) Charlie’s entire family lives in a tiny wood house on the outskirts of a big town. The house isn’t big enough for everyone—there are only two rooms and one bed—so the grandparents spend all their time in the bed and never get out. Charlie and his parents sleep on mattresses on the floor in the other room.

Things aren’t so bad in the summer, but in the winter, the Buckets’ house is freezing cold. They’re too poor to be able to afford a bigger house or another bed, since Mr. Bucket is the only member of the family with a job. He works in a toothpaste factory, screwing caps onto filled tubes of toothpaste. No matter how much he works, he barely makes enough money to support his family. So, the family subsists on meals of bread, margarine, boiled potatoes, boiled cabbage, and cabbage soup. On Sundays, they get second helpings. Everyone is always hungry, but nobody starves.

Charlie suffers the most out of his family. Mr. Bucket and Mrs. Bucket regularly give Charlie their helpings of food, but it’s not enough for a growing boy like Charlie. What he really wants is chocolate. Every morning as Charlie walks to school, he passes shops with slabs of chocolate stacked in the windows. His classmates eat candy bars all day long, which is torture for Charlie.

Charlie gets chocolate once per year, on his birthday. His parents and grandparents save their money to buy Charlie a single, small chocolate bar. Every year, he makes his chocolate bar last as long as possible. He first spends several days staring at it; then, he nibbles a tiny bit every day until it’s gone. He can make his candy bars last a month like this.

But what makes life even worse for Charlie is that he not only sees chocolate all the time in shop windows—from his house, he can see a massive chocolate factory. The factory, Wonka’s factory, is the biggest and most famous in the world. A man named Mr. Willy Wonka, a great inventor and chocolatier, owns it. His factory is mysterious, with high walls, smoking chimneys, and odd sounds. The air around it smells like chocolate. Charlie has to pass it every day as he walks to and from school. He loves the smell and wishes that he could get inside the factory.