On Getting Our Just Desserts i : Willy Wonka, Immanuel Kant, and the Summum Bonum Jacob M. Held Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is arguably Roald Dahl’s most famous children’s book, even if that is largely due to the fact that many people only know the story from the 1971 movie, “Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.” And the movie is amazing. ii Surely a successful movie that has crept into our collective consciousness explains why this is still Dahl’s best known work. But I believe there is a reason why the story itself, the story of Charlie Bucket, resonates with so many in the first place, it speaks to our desire for justice, for the good getting what they deserve and the wicked getting what’s coming to them, our demand for our just deserts. At first blush, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a classic underdog story. iii Charlie and his family struggle from day to day. The extended family lives in a small shack while Mr. Bucket works at a toothpaste factory screwing caps on tubes of toothpaste for a wage barely large enough to sustain the basic biological functions necessary for life in an attempt to support his wife, son, and elderly parents and in-laws. Charlie has nothing, and for him, as for so many born into debilitating poverty his future will resemble that of his father, if he’s lucky. As an underdog, as a child born into destitute poverty we root for him, we want better for him. We see him doing everything right, and accepting the meager rewards he ekes out of a frugal world; his one bar of birthday chocolate that he savors over the course of weeks. Among all of this his family provides a loving home, and we find some measure of satisfaction that at least he has a happy home life. He’ll be loved as he starves to death. So we hope alongside Charlie for