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Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Vice and Virtue
Parenting
Poverty and Wealth
Fun, Absurdity, and Wonder
Prejudice and Bigotry
Summary
Analysis
When Mr. Bucket gets home that night, his paper announces that two more Golden Tickets have been found. After supper, Mr. Bucket reads that a Miss Violet Beauregarde found the third ticket. When the paper’s reporter arrived at the Beauregarde house, Violet was standing on a chair in her living room, waving the ticket around, talking loudly, and chewing gum. She told the reporters that she’s usually a gum chewer, but she switched to candy bars to find her Golden Ticket. Violet said that she chews gum all day long, except at mealtimes.
Violet may not be as obviously wealthy as Veruca or Augustus, but she’s still better off than Charlie—she has a living room in her home, whereas Charlie and his family only have two rooms to house the seven of them. Violet’s vice, meanwhile, is that she chews gum constantly. Charlie, of course, doesn’t even have the option to engage in this particular vice, since his family presumably can’t afford to purchase gum.
Themes
Mr. Bucket reads that Violet told reporters that Mrs. Beauregarde doesn’t think chewing gum is ladylike, and Mrs. Beauregarde tried to scold her daughter from across the room. But Violet shouted at her mother to calm down and then shared that she’s been chewing her current piece of gum for three months—a world record. She sticks it on her bedpost at night. Violet used to like sticking her gum on the elevator buttons in her apartment building, just to annoy people. Grandma Josephine and Grandma Georgina call Violet “beastly” and “despicable.”
Mrs. Beauregarde makes an effort to correct Violet’s behavior, but she doesn’t escalate when Violet essentially refuses to listen to her mother. This passive parenting style, the novel implies, contributes to Violet’s rude behavior. Moreover, Violet’s habit of sticking chewed gum on elevator buttons shows that her misbehavior extends to how she treats others. She seemingly only cares about her own entertainment and doesn’t see the value in keeping her apartment building clean for her neighbors.
Themes
Mr. Bucket reads that the fourth Golden Ticket was found by a boy named Mike Teavee. The reporter shares that young Mike was annoyed when all the reporters showed up, as he was watching a gangster movie with lots of guns on a huge TV. Mike had toy pistols hanging off his body and would occasionally leap up and shoot one of them. The boy even shouted at the reporters to not interrupt his show; he loves gangster movies with lots of shooting and violence.
Where the previous three ticket winners’ parents were at least present for their interviews, Mike’s parents are conspicuously absent. He’s left to his own devices with only the television to entertain him. Given his love of violent shows and movies, it seems likely that Mike’s toy guns help him emulate what he sees on television. The television is “parenting” Mike in this sense, and it’s teaching him that violence is appropriate.
Themes
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Grandma Georgina asks if all kids are “brats” these days. Mrs. Bucket says that not all kids behave like that, and Grandpa George notes that there’s still one ticket left. Grandma Georgina is certain that the child who finds the final Golden Ticket will be “some nasty little beast who doesn’t deserve it.”
Here, Grandma Georgina essentially suggests that life doesn’t necessarily reward those who are most deserving. Even though Charlie isn’t “bratty” like the other children, virtue isn’t going to win him a Golden Ticket when other, wealthier kids can essentially buy them.
Themes
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