At its surface, Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a far-fetched fable of a boy’s impossible journey through a factory that manufactures dreams sweeter than its chocolate. However, when I attended the 2013 musical stage adaptation, it became the tale of a poor young man who ascends the social ladder through hope and hard work. According to London’s Economist, this shift from fantasy is no coincidence. In a recent review of the production, a columnist writes that many British workers fear that recent widening wealth gaps and decreasing job opportunities are permanent. He continues, “A possible reason for the sympathetic tone [of the show] is that… intergenerational social mobility… has stalled.” In this social context, Charlie Bucket’s journey is not only children’s fantasy. Charlie Bucket is a leader who inspires struggling families to believe that the era of the self-made  has not ended. The musical demonstrates that realistic working-class struggles teach more lessons than any wealthy child can inherit.

The musical’s first act develops the Bucket family’s plight. Four grandparents, two parents, and one child live in the same dilapidated house. Each day, all seven split one large bowl of cabbage soup while Charlie’s unemployed father searches in vain for work. At night, Charlie and his father rotate between sleeping on the floor and easy chair as Mrs. Bucket works the graveyard shift. However, daily economic struggles are not confined the adults. In addition to attending school, Charlie works as a paperboy to supply the family with the funds his father cannot provide. With his busy schedule, Charlie is unable even to dream. His parents light-heartedly chastise him for daydreaming instead of completing his schoolwork, which they believe will create more opportunities for him. On his birthday, the family can afford to buy Charlie one present, a chocolate bar, only after Grandpa Joe sacrifices his funeral savings. While the Bucket family’s condition is extreme, their struggles are realistic to modern England.

Unemployment, hunger, and the struggle to balance finances continue to plague the average working class family. In May, Cable News Network (CNN) reporter Mark Thompson wrote that new austerity measures have caused the number of British people depending on food banks to balloon to 500,000. Additionally, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported that April unemployment levels had risen to 7.9%, affecting 2.56 million citizens. With such bleak conditions, it seems right to assume that Charlie would spend his life struggling for day-to-day survival. However, the musical’s heroes are not the rich, spoiled children.

The musical inverts the expectations an audience might have based on the characters’ social positions. Charlie utilizes the lessons he learned during his struggles in lower-class society to win Willy Wonka’s factory. As the golden ticket winners traverse the factory’s obstacles, all but Charlie learn the gruesome lessons of gluttony, disobedience, idleness, and greed. Their family’s money was able to purchase their children everything but manners, and the children were spoiled into their demise. In contrast, Charlie has learned honesty from work, temperance from a restricted diet, and prudence from poverty. Furthermore, he realized that his dreams would not be handed to him, but achieved through hard work. Consequently, he transcends social boundaries and acquires greater wealth and fame than any of the other children possess. At the musical’s end, viewers sympathize more with poor Charlie Bucket than his wealthy counterparts do.

Charlie Bucket’s leadership and success in Wonka’s challenge is refreshing for empathetic viewers. Although Charlie’s parents cannot afford a television or peanut factory, they can offer him an education and a strong work ethic. Similarly, while the average income might not afford every lavish refinement of modern society, it can provide overlooked life lessons and manners. While these lessons will not make each child the owner of an industrial giant, they will provide the tools necessary to obtain work and perhaps a comfortable style of living. Perhaps with some luck, hope will stay alive; some children may transcend the social boundaries and join the upper class.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’s success lies not only in its imaginative allure, but also in the hope it gives to the average middle class family. Charlie and his parents grapple with the struggles of impending destitution. Despite this, the Economist columnist writes that Charlie and the “Aspiration” Factory is “fantastic fun to watch.” It severs the boundaries restricting the poor from ascending the British social ladder and proves it is honesty, temperance, and dignity, which will eventually be our greatest assets. As the curtains close, the audience is left with advice: one must be always prepared, because a savior, a Wonka, may be right at one’s side.  This hopeful message is two-fold. First, it proves that money is a surmountable obstacle, and the self-made man may still be achieved. Second, it proves that the art of leadership is not dead, especially for those our age: stay humble, stick to your principles, be willing to learn, and success can be achieved. The results may be sweeter than expected.