Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is too hard on Mike Teavee

Art by Elliot Skow

You probably remember the story: five children win a lifetime supply of chocolate, and a tour of Wonka's factory. The hero, Charlie Bucket, is kind-hearted and generous. As for the others, Augustus Gloop is a glutton, Veruca Salt is spoiled, Violet Beauregarde is self-obsessed, and Mike Teavee…is somewhat rude, and maybe likes to watch too much television. The novel is infused with sympathy and admiration for Charlie, loathing of the others, and approval of each child's fate—horrible bodily transformation for everyone, except Charlie, who receives the entire factory as a parting gift. The story's loathing manifests most clearly in the moralizing rhymes the Oompa-Loompas sing after each child gets in trouble. They condemn Mike as harshly as the others:

The most important thing we've learned, 
So far as children are concerned, 
Is never, never, NEVER let 
Them near your television set—  
[...]  
But did you ever stop to think, 
To wonder just exactly what 
This does to your beloved tot? 
IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD! 
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! 
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!  
[...]  
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! 
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! 
 [...]  
P.S. Regarding Mike Teavee, 
We very much regret that we 
Shall simply have to wait and see 
If we can get him back his height. 
But if we can't—it serves him right. 

But Mike is not really that bad, and does not merit being so despised.

Wonka aside, the characters are one-dimensional. Charlie stands apart not because he is more complex, but because we spend more time with him, and so our feelings are richer. We admire him for caring for his grandparents, sympathize as he suffers in poverty and hunger, and join him hoping against hope, as he unwraps each chocolate bar, looking for a golden ticket. We spend far less time with the wicked children and see almost nothing of their inner lives.

Except for Mike: while we don't get as much of him as of Charlie, there are hints that he is at least as interesting as the hero. True, Mike is as crudely-drawn as the others at first. He does not come off well. Visitors have filled his house, wanting to see the boy who unwrapped the fourth golden ticket, and Mike is annoyed, because they are making it hard for him to concentrate on the TV. Someone asks him a question and he shouts "Quiet!":

Didn't I tell you not to interrupt! This show's an absolute whiz-banger! It's terrific! I watch it every day. I watch all of them every day, even the crummy ones, where there's no shooting. 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 knuckledusters! Oh boy, what wouldn't I give to be doing that myself! It's the life, I tell you! It's terrific!

Mike admires gangsters; he admires violence; he wishes he were a violent gangster. These aren't marks of good character.

But the Mike who gave that speech is not the Mike we get to know on the tour. That Mike is curious and skeptical. It's usually Mike calling Wonka out for saying outrageous things. When Wonka says that once he's perfected his "Hair Toffee" "there'll be no excuse any more for little boys and girls going about with bald heads," it's Mike who pipes up with "But Mr. Wonka, little boys and girls never do go about with..." When some experimental gum turns Violet into a blueberry, and Wonka moralizes "That's what comes from chewing disgusting gum all day long!," it's Mike who sensibly asks, "If you think gum is so disgusting, then why do you make it in your factory?" When Wonka observes that his lickable wallpaper has pictures of snozzberries that taste like snozzberries, it's Mike who does the double-take—"Snozzberries?"—and asks, "But what does a snozzberry taste like?" And when Wonka says that television transmission works by splitting photographs into tiny pieces and flinging them through space and down into the world's TV sets where they are reassembled "just like a jigsaw puzzle," it's Mike who notes, "That isn't exactly how it works." Mike is pretty smart. How many ten-year olds, even ten-year olds who watch tons of TV, know how television works?

Violet and Veruca also respond to a few things on the tour that make no sense (Augustus is out of the story too fast to say much); Violet, for example, notices that storeroom 77, which contains "all the beans," is labeled to include "has beans." But neither Violet nor Veruca is as curious or as skeptical as Mike; neither challenges Wonka or corrects him. (Charlie is a harder case: while he is never provoked by Wonka's remarks, he is quite inquisitive about Wonka and the factory when Grandpa Joe describes them, and he refuses at first to believe it when his grandpa says that the factory is staffed by very tiny people.)

Augustus, Violet, and Veruca disobey Wonka, with terrible results, and the same happens to Mike. But Mike's mistake is different in kind. Augustus is a glutton, and his mistake is a manifestation of this flaw: he can't resist drinking from Wonka's chocolate river so greedily that he falls in, and is sucked up a tube into the bowels of the factory. Violet and Veruca also get into trouble by acting on their flaws. Violet is selfish and gum-obsessed; and she disobeys Wonka to try his chewing-gum meal, which turns her into the meal she is supposed to be eating. Veruca is spoiled; and after deciding she is entitled to one of Wonka's nut-sorting squirrels, she disobeys him to grab one. The squirrels tackle her and throw her down the garbage chute.

What about Mike? His flaws, such as they are, are a tendency toward rudeness (though he is never rude during the tour), and a larger-than-healthy enthusiasm for watching television. But it is not this enthusiasm that gets him into trouble. True, he gets into trouble in the Television-Chocolate Room, but when he disobeys Wonka it is not to watch TV. After seeing the Oompa-Loompas send a chocolate bar by television, Mike insists on trying to send himself, even as Wonka cries "no!" Okay, he was warned and went ahead anyway; Mike is a bit reckless. In a kid this is hardly a deep moral flaw. Try to see things from Mike's perspective: Wonka has invented teletransportation. Mike wants to try it. Wouldn't you?

It's natural—for adults at least—to fault Roald Dahl for making Augustus, Veruca, and Violet too simple, even for a fairy-tale-like children's book; but with them he at least achieved his aim. With Mike his intentions seem to have been the same, but Mike slipped out of his control, and grew to a kid who deserved better than the contempt directed at him.

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See also Adult Encounters with Children’s Stories.

An earlier version of this essay was published in February 2022, the week this newsletter launched—exactly three years ago! Happy Anniversary.