Aysu Şen

0324140009
Yard. Doç. Dr. Buket Akgün
Midterm Assignment
29 March 2018

Veruca Salt as a Representative of the Sin of Greed in Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory

Veruca Salt is a character in Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who is
shown to be extremely greedy. Greed is one of the Seven Deadly Sins in Christianity which is
defined as the excessive pursuit of material possessions. In the end, this deadly sin is going to
bring Veruca’s downfall.

We can already see throughVeruca’s character with her name. As Willy Wonka explains
in the movie, Veruca is very similar to verruca, a type of wart and that goes to show us that
she is so repulsive like a wart. As for her surname, salt was used as a form of currency in
ancient times, thus it indicates an abundance of wealth and a high status.

She is already a very bossy and a spoilt character and the factory is a symbol of
everything dreaded and desired (Schultz,464), thus a very greedy Veruca cannot do anything
but desire everything she sees. Even after getting the golden ticket in the most unfair way, she
does not hesitate to ask for a new pony. Most of what Veruca says and does revolves around
her greediness but she is not the only one responsible for that. We see in Wonka’s factory that
Veruca’s egocentrism due to her impetuous manner (Hissan,88) actually come from her
parents. Thus, she is a replica of her parents who use their money and status (“Salt”) to get
what they desire.

Right before Veruca’s fall, we also see she shows signs of Envy, again one of the Seven
Deadly Sins by wanting a squirrel she was not allowed to have. Her envy of Willy Wonka’s
squirrels was ultimately her downfall. Eventually, she is deemed to be a “bad nut” and her
spoilt attitude leads her to the garbage chute “where all the other bad nuts go,” which clearly
symbolizes her bad character, so she deserves to go “down the garbage chute”(Hissan,89).
After her fall during the Oompa Loompa song, even the Oompa Loompas wear yellow, the
color of greed, to point out to the fact that her greediness is the cause of her fall.

Veruca, like other children except Charlie, pays for what she does and suffers a disastrous
accident (Lee and Hwijoon,323). Despite that, in the ending she still did not learn from her
mistakes and punishment and goes on asking for new things to her father. But she is
Aysu Şen
0324140009
Yard. Doç. Dr. Buket Akgün
Midterm Assignment
29 March 2018
immediately silenced when her father says the only thing she is getting is a bath. In
conclusion, children who are disobedient, aggressive and greedy are punished to correct their
misbehaviour (Hissan, 90), and this can be seen through Veruca whose parents are unable to
educate her to be good and obedient.

Works Cited

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Dir. Tim Burton. Warner Bros., 2005.

Dahl, Roald. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1964.

Hissan, Wan Syakira Meor. “An Analysis of the Children’s Characters in Roald Dahl’s
Novel: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Indonesian Journal of Applied
Linguistics 2.1 (2012): 83-92.

Lee, Hyunju, and Seon Hwijoon. “A Study on Zhuangzi’s Thought in the Film, Charlie and
the Chocolate Factory.” A Journal of Brand Design Association of Korea 10.3 (2012):
323.

Schultz, William Todd. “Finding Fate’s Father: Some Life History Influences on Roald
Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly
21.4 (1998): 464.