"Let's Get Milk-Faced and Hum Like Rabbits" is the title of an unpublished chapter from an early draft of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a children's book by British author Roald Dahl originally published in 1964. It was discovered and reported by The Guardian in 2014 along with several other early chapters of the novel, including "The Vanilla Fudge Room", "The Warming Candy Room", and "Let's Roll in Powdered Sugar and See What Happens".
In Dahl's first draft of the novel there were originally nine golden tickets instead of five, so the children were subjected to several more candy rooms and situations as tests of their self-control. According to The Guardian, several chapters were "deemed too wild, subversive and insufficiently moral for the tender minds of British children almost fifty years ago." This particular chapter as well as "See What Happens" were considered "beyond the pale" by the paper's editorial staff.
Synopsis
"Hum Like Rabbits" (aka "The Milk Pond Room") was initially chapter seven in the first version of the book. Charlie is at the factory with his mother instead of Grandpa Joe as originally published, and the chocolate factory tour is down to five kids at this point in the story, including Billy Broadbum and Jimmy Crackhorne. They all enter a room featuring a large pond of cow milk surrounded by vibrating chocolate bunnies and glowing candy easter eggs. Each egg glows a different color, and each bunny hums at a different pitch. Wonka explains that this is the magical source of milk he uses for making milk chocolate, and at the bottom of the pond is the sweetest syrup in the world made from condensed milk.
The entire group runs down the path around the pond eating chocolate bunnies and candy eggs along the way. The glowing and humming of the confections intensifies when they're touched, making the children glow and hum as well. Crackhorne yells to Broadbum, "C'mon Billy! Let's get milk-faced and hum like rabbits!" The two strip off their clothes and dive into the pond, splashing milk onto the others. Only being a pond, it's too shallow for diving and the boys get their heads stuck in the syrup at the bottom. All that can be seen of their bodies is their wiggling feet. Their parents panic and try to pull the boys out of the drink, but the syrup is too thick and both boys drown. Wonka deadpans to Charlie, "Well now... they sure got milk."
Analysis
The Guardian writers speculate that Dahl may have cut this chapter from the book for being too similar to the earlier chapter in which the characters Miranda Grope and Augustus Pottle (who would later be combined into the character of Augustus Gloop) both fall into the chocolate river and are lost whilst being sucked through a chocolate pipe. However, they also observe that the combination of naked boys, splashing milk, chocolate vibrators and asphyxiation seems to subtly suggest scarfing or imply some other homoerotic/masturbatory sexual subtext, and believe Dahl's editors may have drawn the same conclusion. "See What Happens" (aka "The Powdered Sugar Room") concerns an alternate outcome for the character of Veruca Salt that Dahl's editors reportedly considered "patently offensive" and the paper does not reveal its details.
LieQuest 2024: A Lie Quest of Mythologically Discordian Proportions