Mr. Willy Wonka Character Analysis

Charlie felt it worst of all. And although his father and mother often went without their own share of lunch or supper so that they could give it to him, it still wasn’t nearly enough for a growing boy. He desperately wanted something more filling and satisfying than cabbage and cabbage soup. The one thing he longed for more than anything else was…CHOCOLATE.

The tall bony old figure of Grandpa Joe could be seen standing quietly among them, and beside him, holding tightly on to his hand, was little Charlie Bucket himself.

All the children, except Charlie, had both their mothers and fathers with them, and it was a good thing that they had, otherwise the whole party might have gotten out of hand. They were so eager to get going that their parents were having to hold them back by force to prevent them from climbing over the gates.

“Don’t you think they look pretty? I told you I hated ugliness! And of course they are all eatable! All made of something different and delicious! And do you like my meadows? Do you like my grass and my buttercups? The grass you are standing on, my dear little ones, is made of a new kind of soft, minty sugar that I’ve just invented! I call it swudge! Try a blade! Please do! It’s delectable!”

Automatically, everybody bent down and picked one blade of grass—everybody, that is, except Augustus Gloop, who took a big handful.

“Daddy!” shouted Veruca Salt (the girl who got everything she wanted). “Daddy! I want an Oompa-Loompa! I want you to get me an Oompa-Loompa! I want an Oompa-Loompa right away! I want to take it home with me! Go on, Daddy! Get me an Oompa-Loompa!”

“Now, now, my pet!” Her father said to her, “we mustn’t interrupt Mr. Wonka.”

“But I want an Oompa-Loompa!” screamed Veruca.

“All right, Veruca, all right. But I can’t get it for you this second. Please be patient. I’ll see you have one before the day is out.”

“Save him!” screamed Mrs. Gloop, going white in the face, and waving her umbrella about. “He’ll drown! He can’t swim a yard! Save him! Save him!”

“Good heavens, woman,” said Mr. Gloop, “I’m not diving in there! I’ve got my best suit on!”

Charlie was holding tightly onto his grandfather’s bony old hand. He was in a whirl of excitement. Everything that he had seen so far—the great chocolate river, the waterfall, the huge sucking pipes, the candy meadows, the Oompa-Loompas, the beautiful pink boat, and most of all, Mr. Willy Wonka himself—had been so astonishing that he began to wonder whether there were could possibly be any more astonishments left. Where were they going now? What were they going to see? And what in the world was going to happen in the next room?

“I want the gum!” Violet said obstinately. “What’s so silly?”

“I would rather you didn’t take it,” Mr. Wonka told her gently. “You see, I haven’t got it quite right yet. There are still one or two things….”

“Oh, to heck with that!” said Violet, and suddenly, before Mr. Wonka could stop her, she shot out a fat hand and grabbed the stick of gum out of the little drawer and popped it into her mouth. At once, her huge well-trained jaws started chewing away on it like a pair of tongs.

Her body was swelling up and changing shape at such a rate that within a minute it had turned into nothing less than an enormous round blue ball—a gigantic blueberry, in fact—and all that remained of Violet Beauregarde herself was a tiny pair of legs and a tiny pair of arms sticking out of the great round fruit and a little head on top.

“It always happens like that,” sighed Mr. Wonka. “I’ve tried it twenty times in the Testing Room on twenty Oompa-Loompas, and every one of them finished up as a blueberry. It’s most annoying. I just can’t understand it.”

“That isn’t exactly how [television] works,” said Mike Teavee.

“I am a little deaf in my left ear,” Mr. Wonka said. “You must forgive me if I don’t hear everything you say.”

“I said, that isn’t exactly how it works!” shouted Mike Teavee.

“You’re a nice boy,” Mr. Wonka said, “but you talk too much.”

‘All right!’ you’ll cry. ‘All right!’ you’ll say,
‘But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!’
We’ll answer this by asking you,
‘What used the darling ones to do?
‘How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?’
Have you forgotten? Don’t you know?
We’ll say it very loud and slow:
THEY…USED…TO…READ!

“Mind you, there are thousands of clever men who would give anything for the chance to come in and take over from me, but I don’t want that sort of person. I don’t want a grown-up person at all. A grownup won’t listen to me; he won’t learn. He will try to do things his own way and not mine. So I have to have a child. I want a good sensible loving child, one to whom I can tell all my most precious candy-making secrets—while I am still alive.”

“I’m afraid my mother won’t come with us,” Charlie said sadly.

“Why ever not?”

“Because she won’t leave Grandma Josephine and Grandma Georgina and Grandpa George.”

“But they must come too.”

“They can’t,” Charlie said. “They’re very old and they haven’t been out of bed for twenty years.”

“Then we’ll take the bed along as well, with them in it,” said Mr. Wonka. “There’s plenty of room in this elevator for a bed.”

“You couldn’t get the bed out of the house,” said Grandpa Joe. “It won’t go through the door.”

“You mustn’t despair!” cried Mr. Wonka. “Nothing is impossible! You watch!”