Charlie and the Chocolate Factory characters

Appears from the start

A poor, gentle, good-hearted boy who lives in a tiny house with his parents and four bedridden grandparents. The family is very hungry, and Charlie loves chocolate more than anything, getting only a single bar a year, on his birthday. He lives near Willy Wonka's vast, mysterious chocolate factory and listens eagerly to his grandfather's tales about it. Patient and unselfish, he never complains about how little he has.

Appears from the start

Charlie's oldest grandparent, who has been in bed for years but is lively in spirit and devoted to the boy. He once worked and knows many stories about Willy Wonka and his secretive factory, which he tells Charlie with delight. He becomes Charlie's cheerful companion and champion when the family's fortunes begin to change.

First appears in chapter 2

The brilliant, eccentric owner of the largest and most wonderful chocolate factory in the world, inventor of countless impossible sweets. For years no one has been seen entering or leaving the factory, and its workers are a complete mystery; Wonka keeps himself hidden and his methods secret to guard his recipes from rival candy makers. He is spoken of with awe as a genius of extraordinary imagination.

First appears in chapter 6

An enormously greedy, overweight boy who eats constantly and thinks of little but food. He is the first child to find one of the five Golden Tickets, buried in the chocolate bars he devours by the dozen, winning a place on the factory tour.

First appears in chapter 6

A spoiled, demanding girl whose wealthy father gives her anything she screams for. To find her a Golden Ticket, he set his whole nut-factory workforce to unwrapping thousands of chocolate bars until one turned up. She expects every wish to be granted at once.

First appears in chapter 8

A boastful girl obsessed with chewing gum, who claims a record for keeping a single piece in her mouth for months on end. She finds the third Golden Ticket and never stops talking about herself and her gum-chewing.

First appears in chapter 8

A boy who cares about nothing but watching television, especially violent programs, and is annoyed at being interrupted. He finds the fourth Golden Ticket and treats the whole adventure as a distraction from his screen.

First appears in chapter 16

The tiny workers who run every part of Willy Wonka's factory, the secret behind its long-closed gates. Wonka brought them from a faraway land where they lived in danger, and they now work happily for him, paid in the cacao beans they love. They sing rhyming songs about each misbehaving child's fate.

Appears from the start

Charlie's father, the family's only wage earner, who works screwing caps onto toothpaste tubes. His pay is barely enough to feed the household, and the family lives on the edge of hunger.