41 pages • 1 hour read
Roald DahlCharlie and the Great Glass Elevator
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1972A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Wonka-Vite
Wonka-Vite is one of Wonka’s fantastical inventions, a pill that allows a person to decrease in age at a rate of 20 years. For Grandma Georgina, Grandpa George, and Grandma Josephine—people experiencing the aches and pains of old age—Wonka-Vite is a symbol of overwhelming temptation that reveals their true nature. As in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, only a select few have the requisite selflessness and forbearance to resist overindulging in the wonders of Wonka’s factory, and those who do not are fittingly punished.
The three bedbound grandparents eagerly grab at the offered pill bottle of Wonka-Vite: “Six scrawny hands shot out and started scrabbling to get hold of it” (108). The verb “scrabbling” illustrates the greedy desperation of the grandparents, who fight to seize the pills for themselves. This is especially the case for Grandma Georgina, who greedily declares that she should have the most Wonka-Vite pills: “That’s six for me and three for each of you!” (109). Although she does eventually relent and share, Grandma Georgina is punished most severely for her greed, first by being banished to Minusland, and then by aging to 358 years old with Vita-Wonk; the other grandparents become babies. As a consequence of their overindulgence, they are ultimately returned to their original age, rather than benefiting from the anti-aging properties of Wonka-Vite, which they could have enjoyed if they’d heeded Wonka’s advice and taken the recommended dose.
Tellingly, Charlie cautions his grandparents: “Just take one or two each, like Mr. Wonka said, and that’ll leave some for Grandpa Joe and mother and father” (110). Charlie’s sensible advice epitomizes the selflessness and forbearance required in the chocolate factory. Mr. and Mrs. Bucket are characterized as similarly gentle and altruistic; Mrs. Bucket asks for one pill but does not press her point when Grandma Georgina tells her no. Grandpa Joe does not request any of the Wonka-Vite, despite the fact that he is the same age as the other grandparents. Wonka-Vite serves to illustrate the sensible and altruistic nature of Mr. Bucket, Mrs. Bucket, Charlie, and Joe, as compared to the selfishness and lack of restraint of the bedbound grandparents; their fate also gestures to the theme Greed and Gluttony Will Be Punished.
Space Hotel “U.S.A.”
Dahl also uses the Space Hotel “U.S.A.” to condemn greed and gluttony. His descriptions of the hotel emphasize its extravagance; it is “one thousand feet long” (12), contains a pool, tennis courts, a gym, a children’s playroom, and 500 luxury bedrooms. It declared, “the marvel of the space age” (12).
Like the Titanic, which was declared unsinkable in its might and luxury, the downfall of the Space Hotel “U.S.A.” seems to be predicted in its overwhelming fame and fanfare: “Several kings and queens had cabled the White House in Washington for reservations, and a Texas millionaire called Orson Cart, who was about to marry a Hollywood starlet called Helen Highwater, was offering one hundred thousand dollars a day for the honeymoon suite” (13).
The Space Hotel “U.S.A.” is infiltrated by Vermicious Knids, who eat dozens of the hotel staff when they disembark from the Commuter Capsule. Although this outlandish situation is humorous rather than tragic, Dahl uses it to offer a subtle critique on unrestrained capitalist greed, particularly American greed (Space Hotel “U.S.A.”). Through the downfall of the hotel and President Gilliweed’s misguided attempts to manage it, Dahl symbolically punishes America for its rampant economic inequality, decadence, and mismanagement by foolish politicians.
Wonka’s Factory
In the lower floors of Wonka’s factory, Charlie and Wonka race past endless wonders on the way to Minusland. The theme of Imagination and Adventure is illustrated through the inconceivable wonders contained in Wonka’s factory, which is an entire world. Satirical and joyous versions of capitalist industries exist in this wondrous world, such as derricks that produce spurts of chocolate instead of oil, and Oompa-Loompas working with picks and drills to mine “the richest deposit of rock candy in the world” (127). Candy-themed environmental features also exist in the endless labyrinth of Wonka’s factory, “vast orchards of toffee-apple trees and lakes the size of football fields filled with blue and gold and green liquid” (127). The factory is hyperbolically enormous and wonderful, and—like everything associated with Wonka—it is not limited by laws of science or practicality. Instead, the factory is a symbol of unbounded imagination and joy.
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