15 The Chocolate Room

15 The Chocolate Room
‘An important room, this!’ cried Mr Wonka, taking a bunch of keys from his pocket and
slipping one into the keyhole of the door. ‘This is the nerve centre of the whole factory,
the heart of the whole business! And so beautiful! I insist upon my rooms being beautiful!
I can’t abide¹ ugliness in factories! In we go, then! But do be careful, my dear children!
Don’t lose your heads! Don’t get over-excited! Keep very calm!’
Mr Wonka opened the door. Five children and nine grown-ups pushed their ways in –
and oh, what an amazing sight it was that now met their eyes!
They were looking down upon a lovely valley. There were green meadows on either
side of the valley, and along the bottom of it there flowed a great brown river.
What is more, there was a tremendous waterfall halfway² along the river – a steep cliff
over which the water curled and rolled in a solid sheet, and then went crashing down
into a boiling churning whirlpool of froth and spray.
Below the waterfall (and this was the most
astonishing sight of all), a whole mass of enormous glass pipes were dangling³ down
into the river from somewhere high up in the ceiling! They really were enormous, those
pipes. There must have been a dozen of them at least, and they were sucking up the
brownish muddy water from the river and carrying it away to goodness knows where.
And because they were made of glass, you could see the liquid flowing and bubbling
along inside them, and above the noise of the waterfall, you could hear the never-ending
suck-suck-sucking sound of the pipes as they did their work.
Graceful⁴ trees and bushes were growing along the riverbanks – weeping willows⁵ and
alders⁶ and tall clumps⁷ of rhododendrons with their pink and red and mauve blossoms. In
the meadows there were thousands of buttercups.
‘ There!’ cried Mr Wonka, dancing up and down and pointing his gold-topped cane⁸ at
the great brown river. ‘It’s all chocolate! Every drop of that river is hot melted chocolate
of the finest quality. The very finest quality. There’s enough chocolate in there to fill
every bathtub in the entire country! And all the swimming pools as well! Isn’t it terrific?
And just look at my pipes! They suck up the chocolate and carry it away to all the other
rooms in the factory where it is needed! Thousands of gallons an hour, my dear children!
Thousands and thousands of gallons!’
The children and their parents were too flabbergasted to speak. They were staggered.
They were dumbfounded. They were bewildered and dazzled. They were completely
bowled over by the hugeness of the whole thing. They simply stood and stared.
‘The waterfall is most important!’ Mr Wonka went on. ‘It mixes the chocolate! It
churns it up! It pounds it and beats it! It makes it light and frothy! No other factory in
the world mixes its chocolate by waterfall! But it’s the only way to do it properly! The
only way! And do you like my trees?’ he cried, pointing with his stick. ‘And my lovely
bushes? Don’t you think they look pretty? I told you I hated ugliness! And of course they
are all eatable! All made of something different and delicious! And do you like my
meadows? Do you like my grass and my buttercups? The grass you are standing⁹ on, my
dear little ones, is made of a new kind of soft, minty sugar that I’ve just invented! I call
it swudge! Try a blade! Please do! It’s delectable¹⁰!’
Automatically, everybody bent¹¹ down and picked one blade of grass – everybody, that
is, except Augustus Gloop, who took a big handful.
And Violet Beauregarde, before tasting her blade of grass, took the piece of world-
record-breaking chewing-gum out of her mouth and stuck it carefully behind her ear.
‘Isn’t it wonderful!’ whispered Charlie. ‘Hasn’t it got a wonderful taste, Grandpa?’
‘I could eat the whole field!’ said Grandpa Joe, grinning with delight. T could go
around on all fours like a cow and eat every blade of grass in the field!’
‘Try a buttercup!’ cried Mr Wonka. ‘They’re even nicer!’
Suddenly, the air was filled with screams of excitement. The screams came from
Veruca Salt. She was pointing frantically¹² to the other side of the river. ‘Look! Look over
there!’ she screamed. ‘What is it? He’s moving! He’s walking! It’s a little person! It’s a
little man!. Down there below the waterfall!’
Everybody stopped picking buttercups and stared across the river.
‘She’s right, Grandpa!’ cried Charlie. ‘It is a little man! Can you see him?’
‘I see him, Charlie!’ said Grandpa Joe excitedly.
And now everybody started shouting at once.
‘There’s two of them!’
‘My gosh, so there is!’
‘There’s more than two! There’s one, two, three, four, five!’
‘What are they doing?’
‘Where do they come from?’
‘Who are they?’
Children and parents alike rushed down to the edge of the river to get a closer look.
‘Aren’t they fantastic!’
‘No higher than my knee!’
‘Look at their funny long hair!’
The tiny men – they were no larger than medium-sized dolls – had stopped what they
were doing, and now they were staring back across the river at the visitors. One of them
pointed¹³ towards the children, and then he whispered something to the other four, and
all five of them burst into peals¹⁴ of laughter.
‘But they can’t be real people,’ Charlie said.
‘Of course they’re real people,’ Mr Wonka answered. ‘They’re Oompa-Loompas.’

1 abide   

vi.遵守；坚持；vt.忍受

参考例句：

• You must abide by the results of your mistakes.你必须承担你的错误所造成的后果。
• If you join the club,you have to abide by its rules.如果你参加俱乐部，你就得遵守它的规章。

2 halfway   

adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途

参考例句：

• We had got only halfway when it began to get dark.走到半路，天就黑了。
• In study the worst danger is give up halfway.在学习上，最忌讳的是有始无终。

3 dangling   

悬吊着( dangle的现在分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口

参考例句：

• The tooth hung dangling by the bedpost, now. 结果，那颗牙就晃来晃去吊在床柱上了。
• The children sat on the high wall,their legs dangling. 孩子们坐在一堵高墙上，摇晃着他们的双腿。

4 graceful   

adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的

参考例句：

• His movements on the parallel bars were very graceful.他的双杠动作可帅了!
• The ballet dancer is so graceful.芭蕾舞演员的姿态是如此的优美。

5 willows   

n.柳树( willow的名词复数 )；柳木

参考例句：

• The willows along the river bank look very beautiful. 河岸边的柳树很美。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Willows are planted on both sides of the streets. 街道两侧种着柳树。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

6 alders   

n.桤木( alder的名词复数 )

参考例句：

7 clumps   

n.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的名词复数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声v.（树、灌木、植物等的）丛、簇( clump的第三人称单数 )；（土、泥等）团；块；笨重的脚步声

参考例句：

• These plants quickly form dense clumps. 这些植物很快形成了浓密的树丛。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The bulbs were over. All that remained of them were clumps of brown leaves. 这些鳞茎死了，剩下的只是一丛丛的黃叶子。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 cane   

n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的

参考例句：

• This sugar cane is quite a sweet and juicy.这甘蔗既甜又多汁。
• English schoolmasters used to cane the boys as a punishment.英国小学老师过去常用教鞭打男学生作为惩罚。

9 standing   

n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的

参考例句：

• After the earthquake only a few houses were left standing.地震过后只有几幢房屋还立着。
• They're standing out against any change in the law.他们坚决反对对法律做任何修改。

10 delectable   

adj.使人愉快的；美味的

参考例句：

• What delectable food you cook!你做的食品真好吃！
• But today the delectable seafood is no longer available in abundance.但是今天这种可口的海味已不再大量存在。

11 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。

12 frantically   

ad.发狂地, 发疯地

参考例句：

• He dashed frantically across the road. 他疯狂地跑过马路。
• She bid frantically for the old chair. 她发狂地喊出高价要买那把古老的椅子。

13 pointed   

adj.尖的，直截了当的

参考例句：

• He gave me a very sharp pointed pencil.他给我一支削得非常尖的铅笔。
• She wished to show Mrs.John Dashwood by this pointed invitation to her brother.她想通过对达茨伍德夫人提出直截了当的邀请向她的哥哥表示出来。

14 peals   

n.（声音大而持续或重复的）洪亮的响声( peal的名词复数 )；隆隆声；洪亮的钟声；钟乐v.（使）（钟等）鸣响，（雷等）发出隆隆声( peal的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• She burst into peals of laughter. 她忽然哈哈大笑起来。
• She went into fits/peals of laughter. 她发出阵阵笑声。 来自辞典例句