Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

Wonka’s incredible chocolate factory and glass elevator represent a world where the governing laws of practicality, logic, and science are rendered irrelevant in favor of silliness and imagination. Dahl uses imagery throughout Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator to emphasize the whimsy of this world. For example, describing the view from the glass-bottomed elevator, he says: “Soon they could see the countries and oceans of the earth spread out below them like a map” (7). Furthermore, when the family leaves Earth’s atmosphere and begins to float around the elevator, Dahl describes the sight as seen by Shuckworth, Shanks, and Showler to capture the bizarre and humorous scene: “A weird glass box in splendid orbit around the earth, and inside the box, seen not too clearly but seen nonetheless, were seven grown-ups and one small boy and a big double bed, all floating” (19).

The Vermicious Knids add a further, thrilling element to the adventure. These aliens are hyperbolically evil and powerful, as well as bizarre looking: “Its body is really one huge muscle, enormously strong, but very stretchy and squishy” (58). Dahl uses the terrifying Knids to test the mettle of his hero, Charlie.