Character Analysis: Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka
Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka is a highly cynical man. His distrust for humanity, adults and children alike, drives him to extreme isolation from society — instead preferring the company of the small, obedient race of the Oompa Loompas. His beloved character is a mirage of an idol, as the sources of his well being are only achievable within the tightly controlled environment of his chocolate factory. If healthy growth includes enduring deprivation (p. 29, 2020), then Wonka’s eternal waterfall of chocolate may prove less satisfying than it appears.
His positive emotions are devoid of the reflection of society, his negative emotions increase in intensity from the moment his fellow man enters his domain, his life satisfaction is hinged on a dream only he can embody, his vitality is dependent on sugar, his environmental mastery is highly controlled using violence and deceit as protection, his positive relationships are exclusively with little people indebted to him, and his self-acceptance is inflated to the point of distrust and disinterest in most if not all other humans. It is in his mastery of chocolate and candy where he finds the undeniable reverence and confirmation he needs to keep his delusions afloat (XXV, 2020)
Wonka’s theme song, Pure Imagination, is deceptive:
“Come with me and you’ll be in a world of pure imagination, take a look and you’ll see into your imagination, we’ll begin with a spin traveling in the world of my creation, what we’ll see will defy explanation. If you want to view paradise simply look around and view it, anything you want to, do it. Want to change the world? There’s nothing to it. There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there you’ll be free if you truly wish to be”.
Based on these words one could perceive an invitation for creative autonomy — to explore one’s own consciousness, desires, and dreams, and be encouraged to manifest them. This is not in truth Wonka’s promise. The chocolate factory has hard and fast rules with severe penalties, and the dreams are to be had by one man alone — Wonka. His paradise is a trap and he is a trickster embodying characteristics of a grandiose narcissist — with strong drives for instrumental social value, status, and acclaim, and little care for relational social value and agreeability (p. 73, 2020). Where he diverts from this label, is in his reverence for humility and cooperation in others — despite having little himself. Wonka’s contradiction is what makes him so appealing — he’s both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time.
His presentation, playful yet regal, with purple velvet coat, top hat, oversized bowtie, and cane, suggests both conflict and irony — he is unmistakably an adult, but wears what could be perceived as a costume. Such performative clothing indicates a power play, and a defense. It is easy to project a character onto someone wearing a liminal ensemble — like an archetype, the image suggests a story and in this case it is one of power as Willy Wonka is the gatekeeper into a magical world of infinite candy. His appearance confirms the myth he’s created — mysterious, magical, and in all truth, a drug pusher (sugar) with unmissable similarities to the 1970’s pimp suits. His clothes, like his fabled persona, require extroversion, manifesting an impenetrable field around him — intimacy is intentionally avoided and paradoxically yearned for. His lack of fraternity, compounded by his eccentric behavior and presentation, hinders him feeling the human experience — a necessity for emotional development (p. 149, 2016). He denies the unavoidable complexities of life outside the chocolate factory, he denies his own privilege, suggesting sugar (a dopamine inducing substance more addictive than cocaine) as the answer to the world’s problems:
“Who can take tomorrow, dip it in a dream? Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream? The candy man, Willy Wonka can, the candy man can. The candy man can ’cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good. And the world tastes good ’cause the candy man thinks it should”.
This kind of hope is limited to the expectation of a positive future, without consideration for the will and way to actually achieving the goal of long lasting wellness (p. 177, 2020)
Wonka’s most commonly used weapon of defense is confusion and disorientation. When confronted, he metaphorically blows smoke into the room — taking his guests on fearful boat rides through a dark and psychedelic passageway, enabling their addictions resulting in literal inflation (Violet Beauregarde and the gum that turns her into a blueberry), demanding signatures on muddled contracts, manipulating spatial awareness through untried experiments and halls of illusions, even his speech and syntax are largely illogical. He appears to have very little desire to connect, occupying aspects of secondary narcissism — driving him past infantile attachments and into a state magical self-absorption resembling the earliest months of life (p. 150, 2016). Curiously, Wonka simultaneously shows signs of healthy narcissism — feelings of internal solidarity and vitality, the ability to harness talents, self-esteem that is reliable and durable in the face of disappointments and that allows for expansive pride and pleasure in success (p. 158, 2016). His unkindness is so easily forgivable and he knows it.
His long-standing isolation, and the hierarchical relationship with the Oompa Loompas, doesn’t satiate him — his purpose as the world’s most beloved candyman seems not enough. He desires his legacy to evolve, and to discover the honest and prudent ‘other’ worthy of his inheritance — but for him it must be a child. The adult, to Wonka, is calcified in their ways and he longs to shape and control the ‘other’. He tells Charlie when he wins the contest, “Who can I trust? Not a grown-up. A grown-up would want to do things his own way, not mine” — he epitomizes his own fears.
His means to meeting this longing for a magnanimous and compliant successor is fraught with distrust, confusion, trickery, and inflicting trauma (with little concern for the fact his candidates are mere children). His method is a set-up, he expects the children to deceive him, so he picks them off, one by one, until he is alone again — he appears to want to confirm, more than disprove, his suspicions and so he rigs the game.
It’s easy to forgive or misperceive Wonka as a charming, amusing, and inventive man — his colorful world of candy and chocolate are intrinsic with childhood and innocence. But it is not the candy that drives Wonka, it is invention. He desires to be in constant creation, seeking and building what’s novel. He identifies with being the utmost unique — so individualistic, his fears of the imitation, theft, or alteration of his ideas drive him to madness. Considering the foundational aspects of transcendence — safety, connection and self-esteem — Wonka achieves only one, and his self-esteem is more narcissistic than confident (XXXIII, 2020).
He uses humor to veil his violent nature, “The suspense is terrible, I hope it’ll last”. He is a tempter, manipulating the unsophisticated weakness of children to candy as and inadequate barometer of their benevolence — how can you judge a child’s character at their point of weakness? For an adult, who’s had the opportunity to develop and self-reflect, this type of experiment may be more effective, but there is an undeniable cruelty that lays bare Wonka’s stunted growth — he either perceives himself as a child too and is thus unbiased, or he is a sociopath.
His belief in the pursuit of happiness and fulfillment is hinged on possession. His parting line to Charlie, “Don’t forget what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he always wanted. He lived happily ever after”, reveals this truth — a persons wholeness lives beyond them, not within them.
Wonka’s paradise, his world of imagination, must be illusory because it is beyond him. His true vision of society is in fact sad. He speaks this aloud when Charlie returns the everlasting gobstopper, “So shines a good deed in a weary world”. Wonka sees the world as unhappy and hopeless, and believes relief, joy, and freedom can be found only within the chocolate factory — and so he resolves to guard it and his vision.
The act of Charlie, Grandpa Joe, and Wonka breaking through the glass ceiling at the end of the story is a literal representative of the peak experience. What’s arguably missing, at the hands of Wonka, is a greater acceptance and forgiveness of oneself and others, and the fusion of himself and the world (p. 195–196, 2020). He accepts no one into his world that doesn’t meet his impossible expectations.
His transcendence is hinged upon the realization that he is not alone in possessing what it takes to be the candyman. In fact Charlie, the young innocent boy he chooses as his successor, is his antithesis — where Wonka is a cynic, Charlie is an optimist, where Wonka is a trickster, Charlie is faithful (he returns the everlasting gobstopper despite its promise of financial freedom for him and his sickly family). Unfortunately, Wonka never crosses this particular threshold of transcendence, as his choice of Charlie is not because he admires his purity, but because he wants to take advantage of it. He desires someone he can model into himself. What Wonka dislikes in humanity — willful characters with persistent viewpoints — he himself personifies. He sees Charlie not as separate from him, but as his selfobject — here to affirm, admire, and respect. If selfobjects are fundamental to the human experience, then there is hope for Wonka. By bringing Charlie and his family into the factory he will inevitably have to relate, he will inevitably discover his own humanity.
References
Kaufman, S. B. (2020). Transcend: the new science of self-actualization. TarcherPerigee.
Mitchel, S. A. & Black, M. (Eds.) (2016). Freud and beyond: A history of modern psychoanalytic thought. (1st ed.). Basic Books.