"But Augustus was deaf to everything except the call of his enormous stomach. He was now...lapping up the chocolate like a dog"

(Charlie and the Chocolate Factory)

Roald Dahl's books have all transcended through the decades for their reputation as witty and ingenious for any child reader. Dahl frequently deals with issues such as poverty and greed in society; as he does in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964). 

In this book, Dahl uses the chocolate factory as a device to filter out his characters, leaving our protagonist, Charlie Bucket as a symbol of a 'perfect' and moral child. The poverty which Charlie lives in is told to readers from the beginning, yet we are also told that "[t]he one thing he longed for more than anything else was...CHOCOLATE". Immediately, the child and the child reader are lured into the luxurious and satisfying topic of chocolate.

In Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, chocolate is described as "creamy" and nutritious; it satiates Charlie's hunger, as opposed to the bland cabbage soup the Buckets have day after day. It is significant that sugar in this book is used to represent nourishment - it is full of milk and cream, both of which are filling. Chocolate is also seen as iconic to Charlie, and the reader, in how "Only once a year, on his birthday, did Charlie ever get to taste a bit of chocolate". He would "treasure it as though it were a bar of solid gold". 

Readers are later told about "Mr Wonka and the Indian Prince", a story which describes the epitome of greed and needless desire. Prince Pondicherry wanted a "colossal palace, [made] entirely out of chocolate". Not to eat, however, but to LIVE in. If that doesn't shout out greed, then I don't know what does.

"soon after this, there came a very hot day with a boiling sun, and the whole place began to melt...and the crazy prince...woke up to find himself swimming in a huge brown sticky lake of chocolate" 

In this chapter, chocolate is used as a function; that is, it is used as building blocks of a palace, instead of its normal function (providing mouth-scoffing bliss to anyone at any-time need). This is impractical and greedy, perhaps a little ironically, seeing as the prince refused to even "nibble the staircase or lick the walls". The use of the words "nibble" and "lick" are somewhat sensual and almost primal - perhaps suggesting the indulgence and luxuriousness of Wonka's chocolate. 

Dahl then turns the delicious chocolate into a "brown sticky lake", which shows the excess and revulsion of the sugary 'treat'. It is this way that the reader is manipulated into desiring the chocolate, but is then forced to recognise the problems with consumption and greed. 

Which brings us to the embodiment of greed within the novel.......

"The picture showed a nine-year-old boy who was so enormously fat he looked as though he had been blown up with a powerful pump"

Dear Augustus Gloop; the podgy, round boy whose hobby is eating. When Augustus sets his sights on the chocolate river in the factory, there's no stopping this eating machine. The way he is described as "lapping up the chocolate like a dog" degrades Augustus to an animal. What's more, Dahl once again manipulates his readers into feeling not only guilty, but disgusted too. Who wouldn't like to drink molten chocolate from a chocolate river?! Fantasizing about this and actually doing this, are two different matters, however, and chocolate is used to seduce Augustus into the river, ultimately contaminating the chocolate and the reader's fantasies of a lovely, creamy, chocolate river. 

Thanks, Gus.