Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: Chapters 1–10

In the summertime, this wasn’t too bad, but in the winter, freezing cold drafts blew across the floor all night long, and it was awful.

Walking to school in the mornings, Charlie could see great slabs of chocolate piled up high in the shop windows, and he would stop and stare and press his nose against the glass, his mouth watering like mad.

They were as shriveled as prunes, and as bony as skeletons, and throughout the day, until Charlie made his appearance, they lay huddled in their one bed, two at either end, with nightcaps on to keep their heads warm, dozing the time away with nothing to do.

“Prince Pondicherry wrote a letter to Mr. Willy Wonka,” said Grandpa Joe, “and asked him to come all the way out to India and build him a colossal palace entirely out of chocolate.”

“I...I really don’t know, Grandpa,” Charlie stammered. “Whenever I walk past the factory, the gates seem to be closed.”

“Nonsense!” cried Grandpa Joe. “Wouldn’t it be something, Charlie, to open a bar of candy and see a Golden Ticket glistening inside!”

Eating is his hobby, you know. That’s all he’s interested in. But still, that’s better than being a hooligan and shooting off zip guns and things like that in his spare time, isn’t it?

“What a revolting woman,” said Grandma Josephine.

“And what a repulsive boy,” said Grandma Georgina.

And now the whole country, indeed, the whole world, seemed suddenly to be caught up in a mad candy-buying spree, everybody searching frantically for those precious remaining tickets.

And now the whole country, indeed, the whole world, seemed suddenly to be caught up in a mad candy-buying spree, everybody searching frantically for those precious remaining tickets.

Fully grown women were seen going into sweetshops and buying ten Wonka candy bars at a time, then tearing off the wrappers on the spot and peering eagerly underneath for a glint of golden paper.

He was holding his present, his only present, very carefully in his two hands. WONKA’S WHIPPLE-SCRUMPTIOUS FUDGEMALLOW DELIGHT, it said on the wrapper.

Charlie looked up. Four kind old faces were watching him intently from the bed.

She was talking very fast and very loudly to everyone, but it was not easy to hear all that she said because she was chewing so ferociously upon a piece of gum at the same time.

My mother says it’s not ladylike and it looks ugly to see a girl’s jaws going up and down like mine do all the time, but I don’t agree. And who’s she to criticize, anyway, because if you ask me, I’d say that her jaws are going up and down almost as much as mine are just from yelling at me every minute of the day.

'Now, Violet,’ Mrs. Beauregarde said from a far corner of the room where she was standing on the piano to avoid being trampled by the mob.

'Now, Violet,’ Mrs. Beauregarde said from a far corner of the room where she was standing on the piano to avoid being trampled by the mob.

Ha-ha! And what a racket they kicked up, some of them.

“The Teavee household,” said Mr. Bucket, going on with his reading, “was crammed, like all the others, with excited visitors when our reporter arrived, but young Mike Teavee, the lucky winner, seemed extremely annoyed by the whole business.

I like the gangsters best. They’re terrific, those gangsters! Especially when they start pumping each other full of lead, or flashing the old stilettos, or giving each other the one-two-three with their knuckle-dusters!

“Ssshh!” whispered Grandpa Joe, and he beckoned Charlie to come closer.

The old man gave Charlie a sly grin, and then he started rummaging under his pillow with one hand; and when the hand came out again, there was an ancient leather purse clutched in the fingers.

The old man gave Charlie a sly grin, and then he started rummaging under his pillow with one hand; and when the hand came out again, there was an ancient leather purse clutched in the fingers.

Under cover of the bedclothes, the old man opened the purse and tipped it upside down. Out fell a single silver ten-cent piece. “It’s my secret hoard,” he whispered.

All at once, they both saw the funny side of the whole thing, and they burst into peals of laughter.

After the snow, there came a freezing gale that blew for days and days without stopping.

Nobody in the family gave a thought now to anything except the two vital problems of trying to keep warm and trying to get enough to eat.

But Charlie Bucket never got what he wanted because the family couldn’t afford it, and as the cold weather went on and on, he became ravenously and desperately hungry.

And every day, little Charlie Bucket, trudging through the snow on his way to school, would have to pass Mr. Willy Wonka’s giant chocolate factory.

And now, very calmly, with that curious wisdom that seems to come so often to small children in times of hardship, he began to make little changes here and there in some of the things that he did, so as to save his strength.

Then one afternoon, walking back home with the icy wind in his face (and incidentally feeling hungrier than he had ever felt before), his eye was caught suddenly by a piece of paper that was lying in the gutter, in the snow.

The paper was of a greenish color, and there was something vaguely familiar about it.

It was only ten paces away...it was a newspaper and stationery store, the kind that sells almost everything, including candy and cigars....and what he would do, he whispered quickly to himself...he would buy one luscious bar of candy and eat it all up, every bit of it, right then and there....and the rest of the money he would take straight back home and give to his mother.

It was only ten paces away...it was a newspaper and stationery store, the kind that sells almost everything, including candy and cigars....and what he would do, he whispered quickly to himself...he would buy one luscious bar of candy and eat it all up, every bit of it, right then and there....and the rest of the money he would take straight back home and give to his mother.