The Family Begins to Starve
- Over the next couple of weeks, it gets really cold and snowy; Charlie's family can't think of anything but keeping warm and eating, and they aren't having much luck with either.
- Really, the family has very little food, let alone the warm, comfort food that most of us are lucky to have in the cold of winter.
- Charlie's dad has lost his job, and their only income comes from Mr. Bucket's snow-shoveling in the neighborhood.
- The whole family is worried about Charlie, who keeps standing outside Wonka's Factory, inhaling the chocolate smell, "as though he were trying to eat the smell itself" (10.9).
- Charlie begins to get thinner and weaker and he does everything he can to prevent exhaustion.
- One day on his way home from school, he spots something shiny in the snow, only to realize that he's found a fifty-pence piece. (!)
- He looks around to be sure no one dropped it and then he realizes what this means: he will get a scrumptious, much needed chocolate bar at the store nearby. And then, of course, he'll give whatever money is left over to his mother.