CatCF: The brats before they became famous! (Well, almost all the brats. Three of them. It’s a start)
After studying what Charlie used to look like in previous drafts, it is only fitting to take a peek at who the brats were before they became famous. This post will be about Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt and Violet Beauregarde. There isn’t much to say about them, so I am sorry for the shortness of this text, but I am forced to leave Mike Teavee out because his case is a special one, and deserves its own entry in my series.
In the first and second draft, there was no mention or explanation at how the bratty kids got their tickets. These bits of backstory only appeared in the third draft, and they stayed unchanged until the final book. Augustus was always the first to discover his ticket, followed by Veruca. Violet was supposed to be the fourth kid to find a Golden Ticket, however when the character of Marvin-Miranda got scrapped from the story, Violet moved from fourth to third position.
In the first draft, Augustus was named “Pottle” instead of Gloop, and he only had one adjective in his description, “greedy”. No mention of him being immensely fat. His fatness would only appear in the second draft, where he was described as a “flabby-cheeked boy with small greedy eyes”. But again, he is just chubby, still not as enormous as he is in the final book. I guess his obesity came when his name was changed from “Pottle” to “Gloop” in the third draft, but I am not sure of it, so it is just a theory.
Interestingly, in the original drafts, the “Chocolate River” room contained merely a river, and nothing else. No chocolate waterfall, no edible garden, nothing but this chocolate river. Another thing that was changed was Augustus’ destination. In the book, Augustus is sent by the pipe to Fudge Room to be turned into a Strawberry Flavored Chocolate Fudge. But in the first two drafts, Augustus was supposed to be sent into the Caramel Room, not the Fudge one, to be turned into the very-similar-but-yet-different Strawberry Flavored Chocolate-Coated Caramel.
As I told you in my previous entry, each of the children used to have a rhyme in the “Ten Little Indian”-like poem sung after their demises. Here was Augustus’:
“Ten little children on the river-bank in line,
One leaned a bit too far out, and then they were nine.”
Veruca Salt also had a different name and appearance in the first draft. In this first story attempt, she was called Elvira Entwhistle, and she was described as a rather sulky little girl. Mr. Wonka also made some comments indicating that she was a quite fat little girl. By the second draft, she became Veruca Salt and lost her fatness, while keeping her sulky character.
Originally the ninth kid to be mentioned in the third draft, she became the sixth one in the second draft. Her demise was always the same: as early as the second draft she was described as being “covered in garbage” while leaving the factory. As for her rhyme, here it was:
“Two little children were having lots of fun.
The squirrels found a rotten nut, and then there was one.”
Finally, we come to Violet Beauregarde. In the first draft, Violet had a different family name: Strabismus (again, making a wordplay about the eyes), and was described as “a large girl with fat cheeks”. It is worth mentioning that notes in the pages of the first draft indicates that, before choosing Strabismus, Dahl used/considered the name “Violet Glockenberry”.
In the second draft, Violet gained her final name of “Beauregarde”, and now became a “small girl with huge jaws”. The second draft also offers us a description of Violet that is quite similar to the one of the final book but still slightly different: “Violet was a perpetual gum-chewer. She chewed the stuff from morning till night, and she would often use the same nasty little piece for days on end. At mealtimes, when she HAD to take it out of her mouth, she stuck it behind an ear for safekeeping. And when she finally decided to discard an old bit of gum and start a fresh piece, she would always carefully press the horrid little sticky grey chewed-up ball on to the underneath of her mother’s saucepan handles, just where her mother put her fingers.”
But what changed the most and, what would have probably changed the whole CatCF if it happened differently, was Violet’s demise. Originally, she wasn’t supposed to turn into a blueberry! Indeed, one crazy fetish would have been averted! The original plan of Dahl was for Violet to merely turn entirely blue before fainting. After that, she would have been taken at a hospital, and Mr. Wonka mentioned that she would keep her blue hair for the rest of her life (suggesting that the rest of her body was able to be turned back to normal). I don’t know exactly when the idea of her turning into a blueberry appeared, but my guess would be the third draft.
As for her rhyme, it was:
“Six little children – how long will they survive?
One stole a stick of gum, and then they were five.”
To end this entry I will mention another detail I forgot to talk about: starting with the second draft, the rhymes of each child was actually coupled with a song, songs similar to the final ones, but actually much longer. I don’t have them, unfortunately, but if you check the original drafts at the Roald Dahl Archives, you can have a look at them.
Edit: I forgot to talk about one very obvious thing. It seems clear that in the original draft, the bratty kids were all supposed to be fat in some sort of way, to contrast with the small, skinny and malnourished Charlie Bucket. The skinny misery against the fat wealthy spoiled brats who swim in an abundance of food, toys and gum.