Augustus Gloop

Augustus Gloop is a fictional character in the Roald Dahl novel "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" and subsequent film adaptations.

Background

Augustus Gloop is a gluttonous overeater who is the first of the five children to find a Golden Ticket and win a trip to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, but is also the first to be expelled from the tour after disobeying Wonka's orders. His nationality is unmentioned in the novel, but both film versions portray him as German. In the 1971 film "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", he is from the fictitious town of Düsselheim; in the 2005 adaptation, he hails from the real-life city of Düsseldorf.

Augustus in the original novel

In the original novel, Augustus is described as an enormous boy who has "fat bulging from every fold, with two greedy eyes peering out of his doughball of a head." His mother encourages his eating habits, saying that eating is his hobby, and that his habits are better than him being "a hooligan." She is blissfully unaware of the results of unhealthy eating, thinking that Augustus wouldn’t eat if he didn’t need to.

Augustus in the films

Augustus was portrayed by Michael Bollner in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory". He has decent table manners and is mildly polite to Charlie and the other children, but eats constantly, like the other versions; his mother's idea of limiting her son's excess consumption is telling him to "save some room for later." He also expresses concern that it will cost Wonka a lot of money to give him all the chocolate he could ever eat. At the Chocolate Room, Augustus erroneously drinks from, and is accidentally knocked into, Wonka's chocolate river. He is sucked up a chocolate extraction pipe as punishment, and is nearly turned into a mass of chocolate.

In the 2005 adaptation, Augustus (played by Philip Wiegratz) is not nearly as vocal as the other children, but his gluttony is greatly emphasized as he is regularly consuming chocolate, which is also sloppily smeared around his mouth. His diet of just chocolate and meat (his overweight father is a butcher) renders him obese with a lumbering, slow walk, and he discovers the Golden Ticket in his Wonka Bar only after accidentally biting off and nearly swallowing one of the ticket's corners. He is aloof toward Charlie in the one instance when they interact, as he offers him a Wonka Bar during the tour and then retracts it, telling him he should have brought one of his own. When told by Wonka to "enjoy" the Chocolate Room, he begins to gorge himself on the room's various contents before moving on to the chocolate river, ignoring his mother's subsequent protests and Wonka's warning that the liquid chocolate cannot be touched by human hands. Augustus soon loses his balance and falls into the river, and is sucked out by the extraction pipe and whizzed off to the "Strawberry Flavored Chocolate Covered Fudge Room."

His hometown of Düsseldorf is briefly seen as a resemblance to a southern German town during winter, with wooden houses and a backdrop of snowcapped Alps mountains. However, the real Düsseldorf is actually the capital city of the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the lower Rhine plains, and is also located near the industrialized metropolis of Ruhr Valley. In the video game, Wonka says at the beginning of the Fudge Room level, "That Bavarian bully has done it again!", which is a refernce to the 1971 actor's hometown.

Augustus's Endgame

In the novel, after he falls into and is sucked out of the chocolate river, Augustus's body shape is altered dramatically: he becomes extremely thin from being squeezed through the pipe. His fate in the 1971 film was not visualized, with only Wonka's insistence that all four bad children would remain intact. In the 2005 adaptation, his physical stature is relatively unchanged after his journey into the Fudge Room. However, he is partially made out of chocolate, which he eats off himself as he leaves the factory, much to his mother's consternation.

Augustus Gloop Song

The Augustus Gloop Song is the first song performed by the Oompa Loompas in the book and both film versions; it is sung in the Chocolate Room after Augustus is sent up the pipe. The original version talks about Augustus's repulsiveness and his upcoming experience in the fudge machine. The 1971 version centered around what happens if one overeats. The 2005 rendition restored some of Dahl's original lyrics; it reassures the tour group that Augustus will be unharmed, but he will be altered, while centering more on Augustus's personality; it calls him "a great big greedy nincompoop," asserts that he is "so greedy, foul, and infantile," and also reveals the impending doom of the machinery that will punish Augustus for his flaws.

References