It doesn’t require a stretch of the imagination to identify postcolonial themes in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Layla Eplett does so excellently in her article, For Ooompa Loompas, Orange Was the New Black, and for a more detailed exploration of issues of race in the book, see Chryl Corbin’s essay Deconstructing Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory: Race, Labor, and the Changing Depictions of the Oompa-Loompas.
Without rehashing the well-made points in both sources, a few key points to mention before moving on to examine the postcolonialist reading through an ecocritical lens:
- Willy Wonka is portrayed as the novel explorer in a foreign land (in the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory it is stated that Wonka was on a quest for new flavours) customers at home. He says the Oompa Loompas “had” (italics – author’s own) to live in tree houses due to the “jungle [being] infested by the most dangerous beasts” and improves their quality of life by bringing them to England. (Note he does this by “smuggl[ing] them over in large packing cases with holes in them”, like animals, and tells his guests that they have been “imported direct from Loompaland”, like possessions.)
- In the book, Willy Wonka secures the labour of the Oompa Loompas with the promise of being paid in cacao beans and chocolate. This, essentially, means that the undocumented Oompa Loompas will never be able to leave, having earned no money from their time working at the chocolate factory. Entire families are living there, their children also working in the factory, reminiscent of slaves being forced to live and work on a plantation with their children.
- The Oompa Loompas were, in the original publication, described as black African Pygmies. This only changed after the release of the 1971 movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, after which the book was republished with the orange and green Oompa Loompas recognisable from the film.
So: having accepted these points, how can combining a postcolonialist and ecocritical reading of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory provide a richer understanding of the book?
Perfect, profitable “nature”…
In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, we are introduced to The Chocolate Room, where Wonka has designed a man-made ecosystem entirely from sugar and chocolate. A few things are of interest here: Wonka calls the room “the nerve centre of the whole factory, the heart of the whole business”. The language here relates to the natural functions of a body – yet aside from the Oompa Loompas, there aren’t any living things inside the Chocolate Room. The effect of this juxtaposition of natural language for a piece of machinery is to remind us of the genius that Wonka sees himself to be. He holds god-like power over and within the factory, becoming similar to Victor Frankenstein yet without the guilt stemming from his creation.
The design also acknowledges the variety of real-life benefits that nature has for humans (i.e. farming for food, flowers for wildlife, grass and trees for air) yet the purpose of the creations within the room is profit. The synthetic setting may make the young readers marvel at the thought of being able to eat grass made of sugar (indeed they are “too flabbergasted to speak” when they see The Chocolate Room) but it’s important to look closer and recognise that Wonka has removed any other benefits for other living beings – animals won’t be able to graze on the grass, soil won’t be prevented from eroding, no oxygen will be produced, and healthy nutrients won’t be absorbed from fruits and vegetables.
Next-generation colonialists
The awe of Wonka’s guests as they see the Chocolate Room begs the question: have they ever reacted like that to actual natural beauty? What does it say to the young readers about the environment? That the only thing it’s good for is providing for human beings? That it’s only purpose is to be plundered? One particular section of interest is Wonka’s description of the chocolate river: he doesn’t once comment on the quality of the chocolate, but gushes about the quantity: enough to “fill every bathtub in the entire country”. The guests are “completely bowled over by the hugeness of the whole thing”.
The ideas of mining natural lands for capitalist and human benefit are not new (think of the excellent examples in many of Dickens’ books, where he captures the fearfulness within the time period), but here Dahl seems to be agreeing with the cause, not arguing against it. Further, instead of trying to encourage young readers to see the dangers of striving for influence over and control of ‘nature’, instead the readers are encouraged to aspire to it. The comeuppances we revel in aren’t of Wonka’s downfall from his capitalist/postcolonialist throne, but of children trying to take too large a piece of it for themselves.
(It may be interesting to mention The Lorax, by Dr. Seuss, which presents a distinctly anti-postcolonialist viewpoint through telling the dangers of The Onceler, who enters an unknown land, plunders the natural habitat to create Thneeds, cuts down the last tree, and forces all wildlife to leave the area. This eco-aware book, published in 1971 – seven years after Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, presents an anti-capitalist theme which is markedly different from Dahl’s reverent tone for Willy Wonka. In the 2012 film, Thneedville is entirely made of plastic – including their trees, flowers, and bees.)
You can see the 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’s Chocolate Room here, and the 2005 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s room here.
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