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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Chapter 2


Maggie Mae

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Chapter 2: Mr Willy Wonka's Factory

The old people are old. They are not only chronologically old, but they are physically old and described in great detail how very old they are. They are so old they are willing to stay in bed for years, all day, every day. They are so old they are sharing a bed with people who at one time were acquaintances. Grandpa George and Grandpa Joe only know each other because their children married. Mr and Mrs Bucket (who have no first names) must not have siblings. And while I understand this is a children's story and it makes it easier for kids... what are the chances of a "George" marrying a "Georgina" and a "Joe" marrying a "Josephine" ... and then the children of these people married each other. Maybe the reason they don't have names is because Roald Dahl couldn't think of a third form of Joe and George. 

Anyway, so back to the story. Charlie likes to listen to the old people's stories at night. He will spend up to HALF AN HOUR listening to these old people talk. The old people who sleep almost all day and only perk up when Charlie is around. 

This is depressing. 

One night, Charlie (who has a fixation on this chocolate factory) asks the Grandparents about Wonka's Chocolate Factory. It's the biggest in the world. The Grandparents have nothing bad to say about Mr. Willy Wonka. He's just amazing and extraordinary and famous and everyone in the world loves him. And he's got all these amazing chocolate inventions, like a way to make chocolate ice cream that stays cold and doesn't melt. 

He's got gum that doesn't lose it's flavour, and caramels that change color, and a million other things. Charlie and Grandpa Joe talk about this and are kind of sad about not having any money. 

Then Grandpa Joe says he's going to tell Charlie about "that crazy Indian prince" and the chapter ends. DUN DUN DUN. 

 

 

 

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HerNameIsBuffy

Posted

Quote

The old people who sleep almost all day and only perk up when Charlie is around. 

What are you saying - old people turn into cats at some point?

Quote

Charlie (who has a fixation on this chocolate factory) asks the Grandparents about Wonka's Chocolate Factory.

He was what, 11 or 12 at this time?  You'd think between his fixation and easy access to people who knew all about it it would have come up in conversation all the time.  I mean how much can they have to talk about?

Quote

Charlie and Grandpa Joe talk about this and are kind of sad about not having any money. 

I appreciate a delicious treat as much as the next person, but I'd be sadder if I was bed ridden with my husband and another couple and we couldn't afford another bed.  Or much sadder watching my son struggle to support us with his toothpaste cap screwing on skills.  Or, you know, a balanced diet and proper living conditions for our beloved grandchild.  

But lack of candy is right up there.

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HerNameIsBuffy

Posted

Meant to add this - hope it merges...

Quote

Maybe the reason they don't have names is because Roald Dahl couldn't think of a third form of Joe and George. 

Josiah and Georgia.   But then there would be the weirdness with Charlie being a form of neither...which could cause raised eyebrows over the break with tradition.  Unless the parents were Josiah Charles and Georgia Charlotte then he keeps with the theme.  But then his marriage prospects will be limited to those named Charlotte, Caroline, Carla, Charla, Carol...

Does make you wonder if Charlie's middle name is Joseph or George.  That had to be a bone of contention.  Maybe both, but do other people do the dual middle name?  It's more a Catholic thing IME...and then there is always going to be an issue of who got top billing.

 

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church_of_dog

Posted

OMG, the cognitive dissonance we all overlooked with this story was amazing.  I guess candy will do that to you.

Upon further thought, that's kinda the whole point of the story, innit?  :doh:

Next thing, you're probably going to tell me that "So Much Time, So Little To Do" is backwards? :crying-blue:

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Ali

Posted (edited)

I am so excited that you are doing this.

@HerNameIsBuffy I wanted to do a dual middle name for my son, but my husband thought it made his name too long. It is not very common in my circle.

Edited by Ali
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blessalessi

Posted (edited)

I have experienced both privilege and poverty at varying times in adulthood and never have I more wanted a sweet treat than during the hard times.  I have also struggled with depression and lived in the rut of feeling bed-ridden when my body was actually good-to-go all along. I actually clearly remember telling someone that I felt like "Grandpa Joe getting out of bed after 20 years" when I first made a significant step towards getting my life back on track.

I don't think Dahl ever intended for Charlie to provide us with an accurate portrayal of social history. He was setting up Charlie's world with hyperbolic flourish for a primarily juvenile audience with a limited attention span.

I suspect that he called the grandparents Joe and Josephine and George and Georgina to add to the story the element of comfort and repetition that kids tend to enjoy, and as part of his set up of a domestic arrangement that had largely been unchanged for 20 years. I doubt that the author and creator of the Everlasting Gobstopper and the Three Course Dinner Chewing Gum would have struggled to find other names for his characters, if he had wanted them to be any other way. 

But, in creating this particularly heart-rending family setting, Dahl pierced the heart of so many social issues of the time.  Bed-sharing and overcrowding in tiny back-to-back terraced houses was very common. Poverty was endemic and, in industrial towns, everyone's lives were lived in the shadows of huge factories where each worker would have one tiny part to play in the production process.

Before I discovered Dahl, most of my reading was from the likes of Enid Blyton, who wrote mainly about middle-class children with whom I could never really identify, who spent their privileged lives drinking ginger beer and stuffing themselves with cake and biscuits at boarding school or on holidays at the seaside.

Charlie was a gift to the majority of British kids who rarely got out of their home towns for a day at the seaside. It was an utterly genius idea to create a chocolate paradise right inside the bleak factory walls that were part of the average child's daily experience, and to serve up comedy and excitement and social justice alongside mugs of warm melted chocolate.  It had dark elements because childhoods were dark.  But it offered hope that "however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance was there."

Edited by blessalessi
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HerNameIsBuffy

Posted

20 minutes ago, blessalessi said:

I have experienced both privilege and poverty at varying times in adulthood and never have I more wanted a sweet treat than during the hard times.    I have also struggled with depression and lived in the rut of feeling bed-ridden when my body was actually  good-to-go all along. I actually clearly remember telling someone that I felt like "Grandpa Joe getting out of bed after 20 years" when I first made a significant step towards getting my life back on track.

I don't think Dahl ever intended for Charlie to provide us with an accurate portrayal of social history. He was setting up Charlie's world with hyperbolic flourish for a primarily juvenile audience with a limited attention span.  But in creating this particularly heart-rending family setting, he pierced the heart of so many social issues of the time.  Bed-sharing and overcrowding in tiny back-to-back terraced houses was very common. Poverty was endemic and, in industrial towns, everyone's lives were lived in the shadows of huge factories where each worker would have one tiny part to play in the production process.

Before I discovered Dahl, most of my reading was from the likes of Enid Blyton, who wrote mainly about middle-class children with whom I could never really identify, who spent their privileged lives drinking ginger beer and stuffing themselves with cake and biscuits at boarding school or on holidays at the seaside.

Charlie was a gift to the majority of British kids who rarely got out of their home towns for a day at the seaside. And so it was such an utterly genius idea to create a chocolate paradise right inside the factory walls that were part of the average child's daily experience, and to serve up comedy and excitement and social justice alongside mugs of warm melted chocolate.  It had dark elements because childhoods were dark.  But it offered hope that "however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance was there."

That is really well put and makes me think.

I am one of those people who can escape into fantasy when it's so fanciful that I need to suspend disbelief - like the magic world in Harry Potter and the factory in C&TCF.  But even in those books, when the setting is in our world...no way would Aunt Petunia have let Harry wear Dudley's old cast off clothes to school because she would have cared to much what other people thought.  So things like that itch my brain and I just have to remember it's just a story.  

I am literal by nature.  I read Moby Dick and despite writing all the right things in the book report back in the day I still thought he was looking for a damn whale.  

And yes, I do think Roald Dahl was intentionally dark.

 

43 minutes ago, Ali said:

I am so excited that you are doing this.

@HerNameIsBuffy I wanted to do a dual middle name for my son, but my husband thought it made his name too long. It is not very common in my circle.

I wanted to do dual middle names with all my kids.  I didn't because of the issues of filling in forms and stuff, but I regret not doing it.  

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violynn

Posted

9 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

That is really well put and makes me think.

I am one of those people who can escape into fantasy when it's so fanciful that I need to suspend disbelief - like the magic world in Harry Potter and the factory in C&TCF.  But even in those books, when the setting is in our world...no way would Aunt Petunia have let Harry wear Dudley's old cast off clothes to school because she would have cared to much what other people thought.  So things like that itch my brain and I just have to remember it's just a story.  

I am literal by nature.  I read Moby Dick and despite writing all the right things in the book report back in the day I still thought he was looking for a damn whale.  

And yes, I do think Roald Dahl was intentionally dark.

 

I wanted to do dual middle names with all my kids.  I didn't because of the issues of filling in forms and stuff, but I regret not doing it.  

I always thought the whale was just a whale too.  

Most of my male cousins on my Southern US side have double middle names.  Not like John-Boy or Jim Bob, more Paul David and Brian Scott.  Dpuble, but not hillbilly double.

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blessalessi

Posted (edited)

I never got past Platform 9 3/4 in Harry Potter because it felt to me like a poor person's version of a Roald Dahl book!

 

Edited by blessalessi
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Maggie Mae

Posted

49 minutes ago, blessalessi said:

I don't think Dahl ever intended for Charlie to provide us with an accurate portrayal of social history. He was setting up Charlie's world with hyperbolic flourish for a primarily juvenile audience with a limited attention span.

I suspect that he called the grandparents Joe and Josephine and George and Georgina, to add to the story the element of comfort and repetition that kids tend to enjoy, and which is consistent with the set up of a domestic arrangement that had largely been unchanged for 20 years. I doubt that the author and creator of the Everlasting Gobstopper and the Three Course Dinner Chewing Gum would have struggled to find other names for his characters, if he had wanted them to be any other way. 

But, in creating this particularly heart-rending family setting, Dahl pierced the heart of so many social issues of the time.  Bed-sharing and overcrowding in tiny back-to-back terraced houses was very common. Poverty was endemic and, in industrial towns, everyone's lives were lived in the shadows of huge factories where each worker would have one tiny part to play in the production process.

Before I discovered Dahl, most of my reading was from the likes of Enid Blyton, who wrote mainly about middle-class children with whom I could never really identify, who spent their privileged lives drinking ginger beer and stuffing themselves with cake and biscuits at boarding school or on holidays at the seaside.

Charlie was a gift to the majority of British kids who rarely got out of their home towns for a day at the seaside. It was an utterly genius idea to create a chocolate paradise right inside the bleak factory walls that were part of the average child's daily experience, and to serve up comedy and excitement and social justice alongside mugs of warm melted chocolate.  It had dark elements because childhoods were dark.  But it offered hope that "however small the chance might be of striking lucky, the chance was there."

I completely agree, and I enjoy the darkness. 

I also like being a bit snarky about these books. I hope it's not coming across like I hate them. I do not. I'm actually considering rereading all of the Dahl books as an adult. 

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HerNameIsBuffy

Posted

Just now, Maggie Mae said:

I completely agree, and I enjoy the darkness. 

I also like being a bit snarky about these books. I hope it's not coming across like I hate them. I do not. I'm actually considering rereading all of the Dahl books as an adult. 

Not at all - you can love and snark.

But for pure snark...how do you feel about VC Andrews?  Talk about weirdly dark.  I would love to do a tag team series of recaps of the Flowers series if you're interested.

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Maggie Mae

Posted

15 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

Not at all - you can love and snark.

But for pure snark...how do you feel about VC Andrews?  Talk about weirdly dark.  I would love to do a tag team series of recaps of the Flowers series if you're interested.

I would love to do a reread of VC Andrews. Flowers were not my favorite - that belongs to Heaven. But I'll read any of them again, or for the first time. :)

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blessalessi

Posted

30 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

But even in those books, when the setting is in our world...no way would Aunt Petunia have let Harry wear Dudley's old cast off clothes to school because she would have cared to much what other people thought.  So things like that itch my brain and I just have to remember it's just a story.  

But it's not just a story.  At least not in the world I came from.  I sometimes went to school with very inadequate clothing.  My parents were struggling to put meals on the table at times and new clothes were not always possible. And due to a combination of stress and poor education and insufficient money and time management skills, it went unnoticed sometimes if I didn't wear enough layers of the clothing that I did possess.  I wasn't abused and it would not have met formal criteria of neglect. It probably wasn't even all that unusual.  Parental apathy is just a very real outcome of grinding poverty.

 

 

21 minutes ago, Maggie Mae said:

I also like being a bit snarky about these books. I hope it's not coming across like I hate them. I do not. I'm actually considering rereading all of the Dahl books as an adult. 

Not at all!  I am trying to find e-library copies of these for my Kindle. I am so glad you started this blog. :)

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OnceUponATime

Posted

48 minutes ago, blessalessi said:

I suspect that he called the grandparents Joe and Josephine and George and Georgina, to add to the story the element of comfort and repetition that kids tend to enjoy, and which is consistent with the set up of a domestic arrangement that had largely been unchanged for 20 years. I doubt that the author and creator of the Everlasting Gobstopper and the Three Course Dinner Chewing Gum would have struggled to find other names for his characters, if he had wanted them to be any other way. 

He changed some of the kid's names. And got rid of a whole heap of content (kids,  'accidents' and really weird stuff)

Spoiler

"Oh, Miranda Mary Piker,
How could anybody like her,
Such a priggish and revolting little kid.
So we said, 'Why don't we fix her
In the Spotty-Powder mixer
Then we're bound to like her better than we did.'
Soon this child who is so vicious
Will have gotten quite delicious,
And her classmates will have surely understood
That instead of saying, 'Miranda!
Oh, the beast! We cannot stand her!'
They'll be saying, 'Oh, how useful and how good!'"

[source: http://fictioncircus.com/news.php?id=283]

 

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HerNameIsBuffy

Posted

10 minutes ago, Maggie Mae said:

I would love to do a reread of VC Andrews. Flowers were not my favorite - that belongs to Heaven. But I'll read any of them again, or for the first time. :)

I've never read the Heaven series so that would be a first time for me.  Too fun.

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blessalessi

Posted

7 minutes ago, OnceUponATime said:

He changed some of the kid's names. And got rid of a whole heap of content (kids,  'accidents' and really weird stuff)

  Hide contents

 

 

That was in the drafting process though, wasn't it?  He created more characters than he eventually used in the final edit.

This website is a goldmine for Dahl fans (though I don't like the way references to the screenplays are mixed in with references to the book): 

http://www.roalddahl.com/roald-dahl/archive/archive-highlights/miranda-mary-piker

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AliceInFundyland

Posted

There is an actual series that aired on British tv that's sort of like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, penned by Dahl. I was able to locate it at the library. Royal Aces? something like that. Not many episodes 60s/70s. Some of them were quite entertaining. Dark. I loved that man.

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blessalessi

Posted

Tales of The Unexpected?

I was too young to be allowed to watch it really, but that was one of the perks of living in a chaotic family where bedtimes were not strictly observed. :P

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Maggie Mae

Posted

18 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

I've never read the Heaven series so that would be a first time for me.  Too fun.

Heaven would go great with our current discussions on poverty. She's from the hills outside a small town in West Virginia. One room cabin with a curtain around the parent's bed, wood stove, grandparents in the rocker chairs outside, five younger siblings. 

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blessalessi

Posted

I only read Flowers in the Attic and part of the second book in that series.  I would enjoy a recap. I found it :pb_eek: when I read it, age about 17.

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Maggie Mae

Posted

3 minutes ago, blessalessi said:

I only read Flowers in the Attic and part of the second book in that series.  I would enjoy a recap. I found it :pb_eek: when I read it, age about 17.

We could maybe do a group read? @HerNameIsBuffy

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blessalessi

Posted

I don't think I will be able to reread it myself, right now. My kindle is too full of childhood favourites!

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EyeQueue

Posted

4 hours ago, violynn said:

I always thought the whale was just a whale too.  

Most of my male cousins on my Southern US side have double middle names.  Not like John-Boy or Jim Bob, more Paul David and Brian Scott.  Dpuble, but not hillbilly double.

I gave my daughter dual middle names, mostly because her bio dad nixed the name I had picked out for her because it wasn't "feminine" enough, so I demanded it be a middle name, and then I included the "family middle name" (which is actually a last name...long story).

What's ridic is the first name he pushed for, and that she has, is no more "feminine" than the one I had originally picked out, and arguably *less* feminine.

I like her name and it fits her but I wish I had stuck to my guns.

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