Charlie And The Chocolate Factory

The Chocolate Room, a beautiful, inconceivably large space located deep underground, symbolizes the magic, and wonder of Wonka’s Factory. Roald Dahl emphasizes the grandness of the space through the visitors’ reactions: “The children and their parents were too flabbergasted to speak … They were bewildered and dazzled. They were completely bowled over by the hugeness of the whole thing” (65-66).

Dahl uses vivid imagery to conjure a space which appeals to children: The Chocolate Room is hyperbolically beautiful and magical, with “enough chocolate in [the river] to fill every bathtub in the entire country” (64). Everything that exists in the space is edible and delicious, with even the grass being “made of a new kind of soft, minty sugar” that is “delectable” (66). In addition to grass, there are “graceful trees and bushes [...] weeping willows and alders and tall clumps of rhododendrons with their pink and red and mauve blossoms” (64). The inclusion of “nature” speaks to Wonka’s Factory as a whole being more than a place for making candies and chocolates to be sold—it is a place to be enjoyed in itself. The sheer joy of creation is what makes the Chocolate Room and the rest of the factory so special.

The otherworldliness of the space is further established with the appearance of the Oompa-Loompas, who produce screams of shock and delight from Veruca Salt. The Chocolate Room and the other facilities embody a child’s dream of magic and wonder, of beauty and strangeness, with endless sweets.