I made a massive writeup about the Deadly Sins in response to another post but basically my concern is one of typical usage: Most people don't actually use the Deadly Sins to refer to excessive behavior. It's to refer to normal behavior that is inherent to all people, and must be absolved through prayer. This is an obviously problematic mindset, because it implies that not only is it not possible to entirely suppress these things, but it also implies that they're all personal responsibility and unable to be affected by material forces.

To use the book itself as an example, almost all of the kids are created the way they are by their parents. And yet, the children themselves are punished! This is my issue, that instead of focusing on the societal forces that create and cause these problematic behaviors, we point at a kid and laugh and say: "Haha! That kid's fat and eats a lot!", in a nearly thought-terminating way. Because when we do that, we don't have to question why the kid eats a lot. They just do! They're bad!

Keep in mind; To you, reading this as an adult, this is an adult man, Wonka, torturing children for being children. To the age-appropriate audience it’s people their age getting their comeuppance for bad behavior. Making the consequences exaggerated and over the top makes them absurd, which allows them to be funny while also being a little scary.

I’m reminded of an anecdote from Neil Gaiman, where he talks about how parents reading Coraline with their kids would find the Other Mother’s button eyes extremely creepy and disturbing, while kids would just chalk it up to the story being a faery tale. By the same token, an adult reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory who has an awareness of unequal power relationships and a strong sense of justice and concerns about how kids are held to unreasonable standards and punished in unreasonable ways is going to have a very different read from a child who is reading a story about a weird magic man with a magic factory. By judging it from the perspective of an adult you may be missing the forest for the trees.

Oh yeah, definitely. At this point I'm just using this discussion as an excuse to dunk on the notion of personal morality. Of course Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a fine book that hasn't caused much if at all societal harm.