The Theme of Social Class in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Literature acts as a mirror of the society in which we live by way of reflecting on, interacting with, and responding to its socio-cultural, political, and socio-economic context (Kiesow 11). The literature further affords us with an opportunity for discourse regarding this context, not to mention that it acts as a tool for reform and education through criticism (Hall 15). Nowhere is this more evident than in novels and children’s stories. One such children's story is Roald Dahl's book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Published in 1964 in the US, the book was thereafter reprinted in the UK in 1967 and has twice been adapted to motion pictures. A key reason for the popularity of this book is its take on laissez faire capitalism and its attendant influence on social class, which is the focus of this essay. Accordingly, the essay will demonstrate how the bourgeoisie, represented by Willy Wonka who owns the chocolate factory, overexploit the proletariat in order to maximise their production and their profitability. On the other hand, the workers are trapped in the web of abject poverty that their families cannot also escape.
One of the key themes of Roald Dahl's novel, 'Charlie and the chocolate factory' is social class and its attendant problems. Dahl depicts how lower-income people such as Charlie's family have to endure the injustices of poverty for generations, even as the upper class enjoys wealth to its fullest. Dahl thus endeavors to distinguish wealth and poverty in this novel by portraying Charlie Bucket's life as uncomfortable, in contrast to the more comfortable life that Willie Wonka enjoys. For example, Dahl describes Bucket's house as being extremely small and uncomfortable. He further notes that 'cold drafts blew across the floor all night long, and it was awful' (Dahl 5), thereby rendering it inhabitable for a number of seasonal conditions. While Charlie has to make do with an ill-conditioned house where he is forced to sleep on the floor and hardly get enough food, Willy Wonka's factory, Dahl describes Willy Wonka's factory as a place to behold, as characterized by graceful trees, a chocolate river, glass elevators, long corridors, and countess rooms. This is a clear indication that Charlie's family is living in abject poverty, even as Mr. Wonka lives a life of plenty. Clearly, there is no way to bridge the gap between the workers and capitalists, seeing as they belong to two different classes. Charlie Bucket's family is characterised by a unique class identity. All the men in the family have been, or are, factory workers. With the unfolding of the story, it becomes quite evident that Charlie's grandfather (Mr. Joe) once worked at Mr Wonka's chocolate factory. On the other hand, Charlie's father was employed by a chocolate factory. All of them led a life of poverty.
Charlie's parents have gotten used to sleeping on empty stomachs and Charlie's mother is an expert in managing the cabbage soup. The entire family has learned to stick with each other in dire situations with no complaints. Poor pay to which the proletariat is subjected by the bourgeoisie, is largely to blame for the situation that the Bucket family has found themselves. Even though Mr. Bucket works very hard to provide for his family, the pay is so merger that it hardly meets the family's daily requirements: “poor Mr. Bucket, however, hard he worked, and however fast he screwed on the caps, was never able to make enough to buy one-half of the things that so large a family needed” (Dahl 7). Although life is very hard, the family has learnt to take it for granted. This is evident by the fact that they raise no objection to the class difference, and even after the Capitalist Mr Wonka relieved Grandpa Joe of his duties after many years of dedication to the chocolate factory, the family does not criticise him. It is not that Mr. Joe was not performing according to his job description, thereby compelling his boss to fire him, but his being relived of his duties hinged on Mr. Wonka's ungrounded insecurities and fears that all his employees had turned into spies, thus resulting in their dismissal.
The mechanism of peripheralization has become synonymous with Charlie's family. Not only do they live on the periphery of the city, but they are also dwelling on the edge of the economy: “The whole of this family - the six grownups .. and little Charlie Bucket-live together in a small wooden house on the edge of a great town”( Dahl 5). The great town on whose periphery Charlie's family lives remains nameless as it demonstrates a universal component of industrial towns across the globe. Capitalism and Industrialism has led to the emergence of cities that share similar spatial division and landscape.
Sedman, in Manufacturing Militance, notes the likeness in living conditions among the proletariat worldwide, and observes the geographical separation between individuals from various social classes living on the edge of urban areas. Seidman notes that the poor reside on the periphery of towns, even as the rich rich down town. He notes that the poorer residents have a tendency to move to the periphery of the town owing to “the economic processes that directs individuals to particular neighborhoods” (Seidman 211). The emergence of industrialization brought with it an increase in the value of land close to urban centres, with the result that the workers could no longer afford to purchase such land. Seidman further opines that the workers largely associate their living conditions to poverty (210). Consequently, they blame poverty for their current predicament, as opposed to the egalitarian capitalist system of which they are now part of, which allow the few who have a means to capital to “over accumulate” by means of undepaying the poor majority. A similar scenario describes what happened to Charlie's family. The family associates their misery to poverty, as opposed to the system that gave rise to this predicament. Living on the periphery of a “town” without a name as part of the larger global class of citizens referred to as the proletariat forms a key theme of this novel. Readers globally can relate to this geographical class-segregated town which replicates the situation in nearly all industrial cities globally.
Mr. Bucket and his father before him, was also a victim of their employers' greed for “surplus labour”. This is a Marxist terms which depicts how poor peasants forced out of their land were further compelled to also sell their labour for cheap wages in industries in towns and cities, as well as how their employers sought to increase hours and reduce wages (Karl 2). This was aimed at increasing productivity which also meant higher profits, but without a care for the danger to which the health of the poor workers was being subjected, the risk posed to the workers' families, their standards of living quarters, well being, and ability to provide for their families. In a quest by the capitalist employer to reap maximum benefits from his poor workers, he pushed them to produce to their maximum by compelling workers to work more for the price of subsistence income. This in effect forced workers into the vicious cycle of poverty so that their own children also had to work for the same employers owing to extreme poverty. From the story, we gather that Mr. Bucket was not in a position to afford glasses, while his parents and in-laws were not in a position to pay for medical care.
Marx notes that the capitalist's quest for obtaining maximum surplus labour out of his workers acted as the platform upon which the very definition of a working day was founded:
The capitalist has bought the labor power at its daily value. The use-value of the labor power belongs to him throughout one working day. He has thus acquired the right to make the worker work for him during one day. But what is a working day? (Marx 342; cited by Haynes, Gale & Parker 25)
Marx further reports that by prolong the working day, the capitalist was in effect also seeking to maximise profits as well as the resistance of workers who wish to work as a means of self-sustenance. Dahl reports that Mr. Bucket (Charlie's father) “sat all day long at a bench and screwed the little caps onto the tops of the tubes...But the tooth paste cap screwer is never paid very much money” (7).
In sum, Dahl Roald has vividly captured the theme of social class as explained by Maxist capitalism to demonstrate how the capitalist overexploit workers in order to realise their selfish ends namely, increased productivity and profits. The capitalists also have no concern for the welfare of workers and their families. Charlie and the chocolate factory is a story that readers across the globe can relate to, seeing as the issue of social class and its attendant problems as captured by Dahl Roald is something that we can all relate to, no matter our geographical location.
Works Cited
Dahl, Roald. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. New York: Penguin Group, 2007. Print.
Giddens, Anthony and David, Held. Classes, Power and Conflict: Classical
and Contemporary Debates. California: University of California Press,
1982. Print.
Hall, Stuart. Representation, Cultural Representations and signifying
practice. London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 1997. Print.
Haynes, Joanna, Ken Gale and Melanie, Parker (2014). Philosophy and Education:
An Introduction to Key Questions and Themes. London: Routledge, 2014.
Print.
Karl, Friedrich. Manifesto of the communist Party. Moscow: Progress
Publishers, 1973, Print.
Kiesow, Holger. Literature as a Mirror of Society: The Representation of Masculinity in
Contemporary British Fiction. Eastbourne, UK: Gardners Books, 2007. Print.
Seidman, Gay W. Manufacturing Militance. Workers' Movements in. Brazil
and South Africa, 1970-1985. Berkely, California: University of
California Press.
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