Childhood Revisited: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Children have a reputation for being innocent and naive. This is mainly because their experiences with the world are few and sheltered. As the children grow up they are exposed to more and more of the unfiltered world. Some parents do everything they can to keep their children from seeing that world. That is because as they see more of the world they become less innocent. Normally adults are the only ones who have truly lost their innocence. Unfortunately, there are exceptions, as there are to every rule, and they are not good. Children who have lost their innocence have had horrible things happen. Elie Wiesel writes in the novella Night how he lost his innocence. Elie has suffered a loss of innocence because he is desensitized, he has lost

Childhood is a social construct that has been weaved together by societal norms and domineering perspectives. Childhood is not a physical or mental state but an abstraction that has been melded by society as time has progressed. In Karen Sanchez-Eppler’s excerpt titled “Childhood” from the novel Keywords for Children’s Literature, she explains how the attitudes and atmosphere surrounding childhood have vastly changed throughout history to yield the general, modern conception of childhood. Children have been deemed adults in the Middle Ages and childhood has been a vaguely regarded concept. However, as society has become more progressive and developed, an interest in distinguishing the young from the older individuals

Childhood, as we all know, is the state or period of being a child; the early period in the development of something (Merriam-Webster). The movie Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971) illustrates five different children with each having different behavior, and they have one thing in common they are the only child in their family. These children are in the middle childhood, primary school age, around age seven or eight. What makes them different from each other is interesting. It allows the viewers to think if their behavior is either result of their experience or how they were raised. How they perceive things and how they behave are part of their cognitive development. The major domain of early childhood development is their cognitive development and the arguable aspects of the Nature-Nurture.

Since the view of childhood changes in the nineteenth century, the potential of children’s literature becomes evident. With the reference to the sources of children’s literature, they can be traced back to alterations in translation and in the literature for adults, where a child or childhood are essential concepts; moreover folk literature is concerned to be a wide source for this literary genre. According to Peter Hunt

When readers read a story written by an author they will usually think that the author likes to read books and is what led the author to writing a book. William Goldman said, “As a child, I had no Interest in reading” (Goldman 3), this can lead readers to imagining the author as a young child rather than an adult not wanting to read a book. When Readers imagine the author as a young child the image imagined can give a better sense of how the author felt as a young child. The imagination of a child giving the reader a picture to think about is less complex than that of a adult giving a reader a picture to think about.

Imagine being a young child walking into a chocolate museum where chocolate lines the walls, you can create your own one of a kind candy bar, thousands of different types of chocolates, and chocolate bars line the walls.

“Pure Imagination” is an a capella twist on the song of the same name from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory”. I must admit that I was startled when I first began watching the video. I was not expecting to see the same face to be staring at me from six different bodies and it really spooked me at first. After the short period of terror, the video became mesmerizing. Jacob Collier has such a large range with his singing voice. The interval between the pitches of his voice were blended together to make the video a somewhat magical experience. He even played the melodica for the piece. He showed that he was a very talented singer with his various use of musical techniques.

Children’s literature has existed for as long as there have been stories to be told to children. Stories, books, songs, poems are all made for children. Children’s literature does not have a definite definition of what it is; basically, it is anything a child reads (Lerer, 2008). Children begin to learn what reading and writing are used for before even knowing how the system works. Children recognise the function of written language by seeing examples of written language that are being used around them. Many children know the difference between reading and talking, they are aware that written language is used to do things in this world (Emitt, Zbaracki, Komesaroff and Pollock, 2015). Quintilian, John Locke, Saint Augustine and Doctor Seuss speculated on the ways children learn the Australian language and learn about their lives from literature (Lerer, 2008). In fact, Lerer states that “the history of children’s literature is inseparable from the history of childhood, for the child was made through texts and tales he/she studied, heard and told back,” (2008, p.1). Children’s literature nurtures an understanding of narrative structures and visual images played in storytelling, this helps develop

Children have been losing their childhoods and their innocence since the dawn of modern society and media. Before the dawn of the modern world, children actually had the time to play, daydream, use their imagination, and just be a kid. However, modern society has put this pressure on children to grow up faster and faster that their childhood all bu

People often say that thinking like a child is immature and wrong, but what if it could change someone's perspective on life? In To Kill a Mockingbird children seem to view big things like injustice and discrimination differently than adults.

Although many view children's fiction as suitable only to children, and an embarrassingly immature pursuit for a serious person, children' stories mold the way we think. They allows us to look at very complex and difficult issues in a safe and playful way, and they give us the freedom to imagine the unimaginable.

Roald Dahl was a British author, who wrote short stories, poems and screenplays. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide (www.roalddahl.com). His most famous book was the first Charlie and the Chocolate Factory book which was published in 1964. This book got a lot of negative feedback not based on the storyline, but based on certain characters in the book. This book focuses on "golden tickets" and there are only five, one of them being found by a character named Charlie, who happens to be poor. The owner, Willy Wonka leads the five winning children on a delightful and frequently dangerous journey of his factory and only one child wins the big prize which in this case, is his factory. However, within the factory there are workers called Oompa Loopmas, who are depicted as black Pygmy people from Africa (Dahl 73). In the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, in 1971, by Mel Stuart the Oompa Loompas are shown as dwarfs with orange skin. Last but not least in the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Tim Burton depicts the Oompa Loompas as brown skin people. Throughout all three different versions of the one story the depictions of the Oompa Loompas skin color changes, but the power dynamics between Willy Wonka, owner, and the Oompa Loompa stays the same and that confirms that they are slave workers especially within the 1964 book.

The Secret of Childhood by Maria Montessori Maria Montessori passionately reveals to us the inner workings of children as they develop into their full potential in an effort to assist adults in understanding and supporting this process. The ideas and methods shared have become the foundation for the Montessori model of education. In the introduction, Maria Montessori asserts “there is no real place for children” in today’s modern society where parents are working, cities are crowded and deemed dangerous, and the home is often filled with furnishings off limits to children. We are asked to consider where children feel they belong and are understood. Though Maria believed that great progress was underway when writing this book, with an

'In children 's literature the notion and construct of 'childhood ' became an influential force...it became associated with freedom...and play; focusing on educating children malleablly. '

rejoices at Charlie not having to starve ever in his life again. On the day of the factory tour,