Summary
Chapter 16: Vita-Wonk and Minusland
Mrs. Bucket is crying about her mother and Mr. Bucket is angrily feeding his baby father. Wonka asks Charlie if he thinks they ought to let the old ones wait it out, or if they should bring them back instead. Charlie excitedly asks if they can be brought back, and Wonka says that they can.
Wonka takes Charlie with him and says they are going to find Grandma before she gets subtracted. The two sit in the Elevator and Wonka tells Charlie to strap in tight. The Elevator heads deeper and deeper down into the Factory. They pass strange sights, like a rock candy quarry, gushers, and toffee-apple trees. Wonka explains to Charlie that what he saw on his tour was nothing; the factory is massive. However, he needs to tell Charlie about the Minuses right now.
He begins by saying that he’d noticed Oompa-Loompas disappearing when he was doing the testing for Wonka-Vite. He was confident he could bring them back; the trouble was finding them. Wonka continues that he had to create age in a pill to bring Minuses back, and details some of the strange ingredients that went into it. He looked for the oldest and most ancient things on earth to create Vita-Wonk. It was difficult, but it worked.
The Elevator stops rushing, and Wonka instructs Charlie to get ready. When the doors open, they must not fall out. Mist enters the Elevator. It smells like an old dungeon, and it is completely and utterly silent. Charlie feels “a queer frightened feeling” (129); Wonka says in a hushed voice that this is Minusland.
Chapter 17: Rescue in Minusland
The mist is condensing and Charlie’s fear does not dissipate. Wonka warns him that there are Gnoolies out there--these are terrible creatures you cannot see. They can puncture your skin and subtract you, bit and bit, until you become one of them.
Charlie peers out into the mist and thinks this must be what Hell without heat is like. It is desolate, empty, and quiet. He and Wonka keep thinking they see Grandma, but she simply fades away. Charlie cries out to her and finally sees her as a transparent wraith. He tries to touch her but his hand goes through the mist.
Wonka orders Charlie aside and pulls out a spray bottle. He aims and sprays Grandma Georgina and excitedly said he sent her back to the Factory floor where she belongs.
The two strap themselves in and head back up. Wonka warns Charlie that the spray bottle is imprecise and there is bound to be an overdose. Charlie pales and asks why he sprayed her three times. Wonka heartily tells him that what matters is that she’s back now.
Chapter 18: The Oldest Person in the World
The Elevator doors slide open amid the chocolate river, trees, and Oompa-Loompas. Charlie hugs his parents and turns to the bed where he sees a strange sight: an old person that looks like a living fossil. He is startled to realize it is Grandma Georgina; his face mirrors the shock on everyone else’s.
Wonka, though, warmly says hello to her and says they simply have to figure out how old she is. Mrs. Bucket is apprehensive about all of this, but Wonka assures her he knows what he is doing.
Wonka asks Grandma Georgina how old she is now, but she has no idea. Charlie suggests that she think of a happening in her life. This works, and she is able to remember being a young girl aboard the Mayflower. They deduce she is three hundred and fifty-eight years old. An Oompa-Loompa brings the correct amount of pills. Wonka wonders if she wants to be younger than 78, but Mrs. Bucket firmly tells him no.
Grandma Georgina takes the pills one by one. The changes begin to occur. She calls out things she sees pass by her, such as Yorktown and Gettysburg. Finally, she is back to normal, though she is angry at Wonka.
Chapter 19: The Babies Grow Up
It is now time to turn to the babies, and even though Grandma Georgina is cantankerous and hesitant to let Wonka play around with his formula, Charlie urges them to let Wonka do his work.
Wonka and Charlie do it together, popping the spoons of Wonka-Vite into the mouths of the baby grandparents. Suddenly, the tiny baby Josephine becomes an old woman. Grandpa Joe embraces her, and she admits that she did not know she’d been away.
Grandpa George also comes back and Grandma Georgina tells him that, even though he was better-looking as a baby, she is glad he is back to being a grown-up because he won’t wet the bed anymore.
Chapter 20: How to Get Someone Out of Bed
Wonka tells the old ones they can now get out of bed to help run the Factory, but they indignantly say they will never get out again.
Suddenly there is a commotion among the Oompa-Loompas. One comes up to Wonka with a large envelope and whispers in his ear. Wonka pulls out the paper and Charlie draws in his breath. Wonka glances at the letter and seems stunned. He reads it aloud: the President of the United States thanks them for their courage in rescuing the astronauts and people aboard the Commuter Capsule, and he invites them all to the White House to stay for a few days. There will be a great celebration, and there is a helicopter awaiting them outside the factory gates. The President concludes by asking for a few Wonka Fudge-Mallow Delights since his candy always goes missing.
Everyone in the room begins to yell and frolic in shock and delight. Wonka, Charlie, Grandpa Joe, and Charlie’s parents head for the helicopter. The old ones begin to protest, but Wonka shrugs that they cannot come if they do not get out of bed.
At this, all three old ones spring out of the bed and jump around the Factory like gazelles. They stop short and wonder how they can meet the President in their nightshirts; Charlie suggests the helicopter stop at a department store. Wonka slaps him on the back and calls him brilliant. Everyone links arms and heads out the factory gates to the helicopter.
Grandpa Joe turns to Charlie and says it certainly has been a busy day, and Charlie laughs that it hasn’t even begun yet.
Analysis
Dahl creates what is perhaps the creepiest moment in the Charlie books with Minusland, a silent, misty gray world where figures are transparent wraiths. Wonka also whispers that there are “Gnoolies” in there: strange creatures that get ahold of a person and begin to subtract them. This seems slightly implausible--which is odd, given all the implausible things in this text so far. Wonka’s willingness to put Charlie in danger in Minusland is also odd, and it dovetails with the prior analysis’s suggestion that Wonka knew what would happen to the old ones all along. Why would he send Grandma Josephine here, why would he bring Charlie, and why would he even allow these Gnoolies to exist inside his Factory? None of it matters, really, to young readers, but it is nevertheless disconcerting.
There is more to say on Wonka’s character. Hamida Bosmajian details these in an article discussed in the prior analysis about the excremental elements of the Charlie novels. He views Wonka through the lens of Northrop Frye’s five modes of action: the mythic mode, the romantic mode, the high mimetic mode, the low mimetic mode, and the ironic mode. In the mythic mode, Wonka is the god-like being, presiding over the Chocolate Factory and the world beyond its walls that craves its offerings. In the romantic mode, he is “Charlie’s guide, an omniscient and wise old man” who helps the young boy navigate perils and delights. In the high mimetic mode, he is “the childless king who seeks a successor for his kingdom peopled by the child-like Oompa-Loompas.” In this mode, he is also the trickster in the vein of Aristophanes, exploiting “the greed and infantilism of the establishment.” In the low mimetic mode, he is a capitalist “[revolutionizing] the means of production to make profit and to meet the demands of our never-ending oral greed.” And finally, in the ironic mode, he is “the devilish trickster in a world of fools and knaves.”
Elements of all of these modes ring true. Wonka is a god-like being, his past, his thoughts, and his motivations all inscrutable. He possesses great wealth, power, and the ability to bestow both on someone of his choosing. He is also Charlie’s guide, helping him overcome his fears, demonstrate courage and autonomy, and find pleasure in the new and the decadent. He does see Charlie as a successor to him, reminding everyone and himself that the Factory is now Charlie’s. He is a successful businessman, giving people what they want. And, perhaps most blatantly, he is indeed a trickster and a Lord of Misrule. He is “all activity and aggression” and is “singular, unattached, a charlatan, fool, Hermes figure, trickster, an elfish businessman… whose surface seems all fun and frolic. But whose laughter hints at the sinister.” As mentioned earlier, the situations in which the Buckets and the old ones end up are often as a result of Wonka’s inventions or decisions. He relishes putting people in danger and seeing them get out of it, exposing their weaknesses and flaws and receiving their comeuppance, and mocking those in positions of power. He makes fools of the United States government and much of the rest of the world. He seems to orchestrate a situation where the crotchety grandparents suffer for their sins. He has his Oompa-Loompas spin tales alternately amusing, horrifying, foreboding, and confusing.
With all of this to say about Wonka, what is there to say about Charlie Bucket, the ostensible hero of the two novels that bear his name? Except for some notable demonstrations of courage, Bosmajian calls him “the quintessence of the deprived empty ego and, therefore, a colorless docile hero, an uninteresting simpleton, a Charlie who will not threaten Wonka’s egocentric trickster-self.” His surname is telling, for “his ego is a bucket, willing to receive.”
And finally, what about the ending? It is an odd one indeed, with the President inviting the group down to the White House mere moments after the baby-grandparents are restored. It is anticlimactic even though it is supposed to signify something spectacular, and it jars to think of the motley group actually meeting the infantile President and his staff. Dahl planned another book but never finished it, so readers will sadly never to get to see the fruit of the strange relationship formed between the President, a poor family, and a devilish chocolatier.
