The True Meaning Of Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory

Your favorite musical has been shrouded in mystery on what the classic film is actually about and what the true message your children are meant to learn.

Photograph: Sir Quentin Blake Sir Quentin Blake / Via theguardian.com

On August 29th, 2014, the British newspaper The Guardian released a previously lost chapter of Roald Dahl's children's book, "Charlie & The Chocolate Factory." This missing chapter 5 contained some new children that meet their fate in Wonka's house of horrors. They include Timmy Troutbeck and Wilbur Rice, who find themselves in the "Pounding and Cutting Room" where they are crushed, flattened and cut into pieces, like tiny chunks of fudge. A girl named Miranda Grope falls into the chocolate river with Augustus and is sucked up the tube, never to be found again.

The demeanor and actions of these new children are lost, so we can only theorize based on the children that survived into the book's final draft, which was the basis for the film, starring Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka.

Veruca Salt

Via trada.com

She wants everything. Now. Veruca ends up on the golden egg detector, where she's determined to be a bad egg and sent to the incinerator. She is the embodiment of greed.

Augustus Gloop

Via aveleyman.com

Augustus never stops eating. A total glutton. It's his gluttony that is his end, eating from the chocolate river, falling in and being sucked into the tube.

Violet Beauregarde

Via aveleyman.com

Violet's downfall was her predilection for what other people had. Pushing people out of the way for the Snozzberry wallpaper and being the first to taste the Everlasting Gobstopper. This final need results in her blowing up into a giant blueberry. A very envious child.

Mike Teevee

Via aveleyman.com

Mike Teevee spent his entire life in front of the television, it's a wonder how he even had the gumption to collect chocolate bars to find his Golden Ticket. But he did and it was his love of the sedentary lifestyle that finally did him in. He loved television so much that he wanted to become the object of his affection. How lazy.

The 7 Deadly Sins

Via en.wikipedia.org

What ties all these characters together? What is the message that Dahl was telling the children? It's that the 7 Deadly Sins are deadly, and that you should die if you dedicate your life to them. All the children, sans Charlie, all fall to their biggest character flaw. Veruca (Greed), Augustus (Gluttony), Violet (Envy) and Mike (Sloth) all perish, as Charlie, the perfect child, not only survives but wins an entire chocolate factory.

Via aveleyman.com

The tale of Willy Wonka and his Chocolate Factory is a morality lesson. We can only guess that the missing children from the lost chapter had elements of the remaining sins, Lust and Wrath, and they caused their eventual demise. It was also Charlie's honesty that saved him in the end.

Via corkymcgraw.com

Did you think the movie was innocent fun? Tell me more.