10 The Family Begins to Starve
During the next two weeks, the weather turned very cold. First came the snow. It began
very suddenly one morning just as Charlie Bucket was getting dressed for school.
Standing¹ by the window, he saw the huge flakes² drifting slowly down out of an icy sky
that was the colour of steel.
By evening, it lay four feet deep around the tiny house, and Mr Bucket had to dig a
path from the front door to the road.
After the snow, there came a freezing gale³ that blew for days and days without
stopping. And oh, how bitter cold it was! Everything that Charlie touched seemed to be
made of ice, and each time he stepped outside the door, the wind was like a knife on his
cheek.
Inside the house, little jets of freezing air came rushing in through the sides of the
windows and under the doors, and there was no place to go to escape them. The four old
ones lay silent and huddled⁴ in their bed, trying to keep the cold out of their bones. The
excitement over the Golden Tickets had long since been forgotten. Nobody in the family
gave a thought now to anything except the two vital problems of trying to keep warm
and trying to get enough to eat.
There is something about very cold weather that gives one an enormous appetite.
Most of us find ourselves beginning to crave⁵ rich steaming stews⁶ and hot apple pies and
all kinds of delicious warming dishes; and because we are all a great deal luckier than
we realize, we usually get what we want – or near enough. But Charlie Bucket never got
what he wanted because the family couldn’t afford it, and as the cold weather went on
and on, he became ravenously⁷ and desperately⁸ hungry. Both bars of chocolate, the
birthday one and the one Grandpa Joe had bought, had long since been

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