ProfessorChaos
New member
Well, it's that time of year again. The Wizard of Oz is on T.V.! But how many are familiar with the original novels by Frank L. Baum? I have actually read them all, and found them to be quite different from the movie.
Lately, I've been doing research into the connections between mythology,
fairy tales, and psychology. The results, when applied to The Wizard of Oz, are interesting. Everyone imagines Oz in the cute style of the movie, but the original novels hinted at darker things than most people realize.
The Scarecrow:
The Scarecrow worked in the field for the Munchkin Boq. One day, Boq was unhappy with the Scarecrow's work and he hung him up on a pole to scare the crows away. However, the crows were not afraid of him, and instead tormented him.
The Scarecrow was a farmhand treated like a slave. His "master" was unhappy with his work so he had him stuffed, his brain removed, and hung from a pole like a Scarecrow. Since this is Oz, the poor fellow is still alive and because his brain is gone he has now begun to think of himself literally as a Scarecrow, and doesn't see the real horror of what has been done to him by Boq. Why aren't the crows afraid of him? Because he is a dead man. Dead flesh attracts carrion birds. Thus, they aren't afraid of him, and torment him.
Nick Chopper, The Tin Woodsman:
In the original novel, the horror of this man's fate is told clearly. He was a woodcutter who lived in the woods near Munchkinland. He was in love with a Munchkin girl, but the Wicked Witch of the East was jealous and enchanted his axe. Every time the woodcutter went to use it, the axe would cut off one of his limbs. Each time this happened, he had the limb replaced by one made of tin. Eventually, his entire body was made of tin. When the Munchkin girl saw this, she was horrified and no longer loved him. The Tin woodsman then retreated to his cottage until one day it rained, rusting him right where he stood. The Wizard revealed to him that his heart had become "kind" but not at all "loving", indicating that his feelings for his lost love changed.
The Witch was jealous, clearly because no one loved her at all. She responds by putting a curse upon a man who *is* deeply in love with someone. She curses him to dismember himself, and he replaces all his lopped limbs with mechanical replacements. Eventually, he is more a machine than a man. A cyborg actually, who is afraid he has lost his heart (feelings) because he cannot bring himself to mourn the loss of his love. But why doesn't he feel bad that she has left him; what was it about their relationship that deep down he knew was wrong? She was a Munchkin girl. A girl, not a woman. So we have a man in love with a child who is cursed by the Witch to punish himself for what he, deep down, feels is a wrong relationship. Realizing this, he can't mourn. His feelings changed through guilt and remorse.
The Cowardly Lion:
All we know about the Lion is that he was living in the forest, trying to scare people to compensate for the fact that he wasn't ferocious at all. Eventually, he discovers he can be brave, but *very* reluctantly.
I see the "Lion" as a man who is in touch with his feminine side but doesn't like it. He has this wild, overly masculine exterior. Hairy, manly. But it's all over-compensation. He thinks to be manly he has to be primitive and cruel because he doesn't know *how* to be manly due to his feminine side's hyper-dominance of his inner self. He doesn't know the meaning of "Middle of the Road" and is the perfect example of a person being totally out of balance.
Ozma, Queen of Oz:
The daughter of the former King of Oz, Ozma was given to the witch Mombi by the Wizard of Oz, who worried that she would someday be a threat to his illegitimate rule. Mombi changed the infant Ozma into a boy and called him Tip. Ozma, in the form of Tip, was raised as a boy and had no memory of ever having been a girl. Tip had no company, so "he" built Jack Pumpkinhead. Eventually, the good witch Glinda changed Tip back into a girl again, and installed her as Ozma, the rightful queen of all the lands of Oz.
Many children don't learn the difference between boys and girls until their parents tell them. In Ozma's case, it took Glinda to "tell" her. Ozma, as "Tip", was obviously a girl... but a girl who didn't know what a girl was, compared to a boy. This was becase Mombi was keeping her in a state of complete gender ignorance while leading her towards living a boy's lifestyle. Clearly, her upbringing with Mombi was traumatic, and this pushed her into her own fantasy world in which pumpkins can talk and other wonders can occur. But all this is of her mind's making, showing how disturbed the poor girl became under Mombi's "care".
Princess Langwidere:
Langwidere is the niece of the late king of Ev, who committed suicide while the rest of the royal family was held prisoner by the Nome King. The princess possessed 30 interchangeable heads, and she would decide each day which one she wanted to wear. She spends every minute admiring the beauty of her current look, and thinks *only* of herself.
In reality, we have a woman driven insanse by the tragedy that befell her family. She kills people whom she thinks are more beautiful than she is, keeps their heads, and tries to make herself up to look like her victims because she secretly hates herself and what she has become. Her vanity is an illusion that masks a true self-loathing, made worse since she is allied with the very Nome King who caused her life to be destroyed to begin with. Eventually, she betrays his location to Ozma's people, showing she feels *some* remorse.
The Wicked Witch of the West:
In the original novel, the Wicked Witch of the West was said to be dried up inside to the point where she carried an umbrella instead of a broom. When Toto had bitten her, she did not bleed, supposedly because her wickedness had dried her up long ago. She is very evil in the novels. She enslaves Dorothy and tries to force the Lion to serve her by starving him. Dorothy kills her by throwing a bucket of water at her, which dissolves the Witch's dry body entirely.
In certain myths and legends, evil wizards can become totally immortal by removing their heart or soul and placing it in a container known as a phylactery, or soul jar. Their body continues to dry out like a dead corpse until all that is left is a mummy-like skeleton. This terrible creature is called a Lich and can only be killed by the destruction of the phylactery and the use of holy water to dissolve the Lich's body. The Wicked Witch of the West is a modern re-telling of the Lich legend. The Wicked Lich of the West.
The Patchwork Girl:
She is a living doll made of patchwork, button eyes, brown yarn hair, a felt tongue, and pearl teeth. She was originally brought to life by a magician who lived in the Munchkin Country named Dr. Pipt by means of his Powder of Life formula to be a servant for his wife.
But in reality, there is a dark side. You see, the Powder of Life only gives life to something that itself is either "innately alive" or once had been alive but now was dead. In Jack Pumpkinhead's case, he is made of living or once living things. Branches, a Pumpkin, etc. And in the case of the Gump, we have the head of an animal attached to several inanimate things; the head granting it the capacity for life. So, for the Patchwork Girl to exist, something about her must have been at one time alive. So, what was the patchwork? Probably human skin, like the Frankenstein Monster. In D.C. Comics' Swamp Thing, there is a creature called the Patchwork Man, and he was such a creation. Thus, I have no doubt in my mind that the Patchwork Girl was a dead girl, Pipt's wife's servant, brought back to life by the doctor's experiments.
Oz: Great Good Place, or Dark Fantasy?
Dorothy must have seen real horrors in her own life to cause her to seek a place like Oz to live in. In the novels Oz is a real place, not just a dream like in the movie! So the question isn't how sane or crazy Dorothy is but how tragic her life must have been for her to find Oz (filled with it's own horrors) better than life in Kansas. We don't know details behind the death of her parents, only that she is an Orphan being raised by her aunt and uncle. The poppy field in Oz indicated Opium addiction, which was common in those days. Dorothy fell asleep there, so was she subconsciously remembering that drugs killed her parents? Perhaps. Eventually, in the novels, she brings her aunt and uncle to Oz to live there with her. They weren't the cause of her distress. Likely, traumatic memories of her parents' demise coupled with the harsh reality of life on the prairie was the cause. That would make it seem better to be someplace else, even if that other place is just as dark. Oz may be dark, but it's the place Dorothy discovers for her family to live in, and that makes it magical to her. Dorothy's feelings towards Oz can be summed up as making the best of a hard lot in life no matter where it takes you. So a lot of the magic is just making do. Dorothy is deluded by the fact that she sees life as a child. When the time comes that she grows up, she'll see Oz's darkness just as she saw it's light. That is why the Oz novels never talk of her life past childhood: because that's when magic isn't quite so magical anymore, and the horrors of the world become obvious.
So, what begins as a cute fairy tale about one girl's adventures in a fantasy world ends up also revealed to be a dark coming of age story about how a girl with a tragic past is trying to cope, through fantasy, with life being just as horrible no matter where she travels. In that respect, it is not unlike the movie Pan's Labyrinth, which I'd highly recommend for anyone interested in the dark side of fairy tales. For an Oz movie truer to Frank L. Baum's novels, Return to Oz is ideal, and for a modern update of that I recommend Tin Man.
Lately, I've been doing research into the connections between mythology,
fairy tales, and psychology. The results, when applied to The Wizard of Oz, are interesting. Everyone imagines Oz in the cute style of the movie, but the original novels hinted at darker things than most people realize.
The Scarecrow:
The Scarecrow worked in the field for the Munchkin Boq. One day, Boq was unhappy with the Scarecrow's work and he hung him up on a pole to scare the crows away. However, the crows were not afraid of him, and instead tormented him.
The Scarecrow was a farmhand treated like a slave. His "master" was unhappy with his work so he had him stuffed, his brain removed, and hung from a pole like a Scarecrow. Since this is Oz, the poor fellow is still alive and because his brain is gone he has now begun to think of himself literally as a Scarecrow, and doesn't see the real horror of what has been done to him by Boq. Why aren't the crows afraid of him? Because he is a dead man. Dead flesh attracts carrion birds. Thus, they aren't afraid of him, and torment him.
Nick Chopper, The Tin Woodsman:
In the original novel, the horror of this man's fate is told clearly. He was a woodcutter who lived in the woods near Munchkinland. He was in love with a Munchkin girl, but the Wicked Witch of the East was jealous and enchanted his axe. Every time the woodcutter went to use it, the axe would cut off one of his limbs. Each time this happened, he had the limb replaced by one made of tin. Eventually, his entire body was made of tin. When the Munchkin girl saw this, she was horrified and no longer loved him. The Tin woodsman then retreated to his cottage until one day it rained, rusting him right where he stood. The Wizard revealed to him that his heart had become "kind" but not at all "loving", indicating that his feelings for his lost love changed.
The Witch was jealous, clearly because no one loved her at all. She responds by putting a curse upon a man who *is* deeply in love with someone. She curses him to dismember himself, and he replaces all his lopped limbs with mechanical replacements. Eventually, he is more a machine than a man. A cyborg actually, who is afraid he has lost his heart (feelings) because he cannot bring himself to mourn the loss of his love. But why doesn't he feel bad that she has left him; what was it about their relationship that deep down he knew was wrong? She was a Munchkin girl. A girl, not a woman. So we have a man in love with a child who is cursed by the Witch to punish himself for what he, deep down, feels is a wrong relationship. Realizing this, he can't mourn. His feelings changed through guilt and remorse.
The Cowardly Lion:
All we know about the Lion is that he was living in the forest, trying to scare people to compensate for the fact that he wasn't ferocious at all. Eventually, he discovers he can be brave, but *very* reluctantly.
I see the "Lion" as a man who is in touch with his feminine side but doesn't like it. He has this wild, overly masculine exterior. Hairy, manly. But it's all over-compensation. He thinks to be manly he has to be primitive and cruel because he doesn't know *how* to be manly due to his feminine side's hyper-dominance of his inner self. He doesn't know the meaning of "Middle of the Road" and is the perfect example of a person being totally out of balance.
Ozma, Queen of Oz:
The daughter of the former King of Oz, Ozma was given to the witch Mombi by the Wizard of Oz, who worried that she would someday be a threat to his illegitimate rule. Mombi changed the infant Ozma into a boy and called him Tip. Ozma, in the form of Tip, was raised as a boy and had no memory of ever having been a girl. Tip had no company, so "he" built Jack Pumpkinhead. Eventually, the good witch Glinda changed Tip back into a girl again, and installed her as Ozma, the rightful queen of all the lands of Oz.
Many children don't learn the difference between boys and girls until their parents tell them. In Ozma's case, it took Glinda to "tell" her. Ozma, as "Tip", was obviously a girl... but a girl who didn't know what a girl was, compared to a boy. This was becase Mombi was keeping her in a state of complete gender ignorance while leading her towards living a boy's lifestyle. Clearly, her upbringing with Mombi was traumatic, and this pushed her into her own fantasy world in which pumpkins can talk and other wonders can occur. But all this is of her mind's making, showing how disturbed the poor girl became under Mombi's "care".
Princess Langwidere:
Langwidere is the niece of the late king of Ev, who committed suicide while the rest of the royal family was held prisoner by the Nome King. The princess possessed 30 interchangeable heads, and she would decide each day which one she wanted to wear. She spends every minute admiring the beauty of her current look, and thinks *only* of herself.
In reality, we have a woman driven insanse by the tragedy that befell her family. She kills people whom she thinks are more beautiful than she is, keeps their heads, and tries to make herself up to look like her victims because she secretly hates herself and what she has become. Her vanity is an illusion that masks a true self-loathing, made worse since she is allied with the very Nome King who caused her life to be destroyed to begin with. Eventually, she betrays his location to Ozma's people, showing she feels *some* remorse.
The Wicked Witch of the West:
In the original novel, the Wicked Witch of the West was said to be dried up inside to the point where she carried an umbrella instead of a broom. When Toto had bitten her, she did not bleed, supposedly because her wickedness had dried her up long ago. She is very evil in the novels. She enslaves Dorothy and tries to force the Lion to serve her by starving him. Dorothy kills her by throwing a bucket of water at her, which dissolves the Witch's dry body entirely.
In certain myths and legends, evil wizards can become totally immortal by removing their heart or soul and placing it in a container known as a phylactery, or soul jar. Their body continues to dry out like a dead corpse until all that is left is a mummy-like skeleton. This terrible creature is called a Lich and can only be killed by the destruction of the phylactery and the use of holy water to dissolve the Lich's body. The Wicked Witch of the West is a modern re-telling of the Lich legend. The Wicked Lich of the West.
The Patchwork Girl:
She is a living doll made of patchwork, button eyes, brown yarn hair, a felt tongue, and pearl teeth. She was originally brought to life by a magician who lived in the Munchkin Country named Dr. Pipt by means of his Powder of Life formula to be a servant for his wife.
But in reality, there is a dark side. You see, the Powder of Life only gives life to something that itself is either "innately alive" or once had been alive but now was dead. In Jack Pumpkinhead's case, he is made of living or once living things. Branches, a Pumpkin, etc. And in the case of the Gump, we have the head of an animal attached to several inanimate things; the head granting it the capacity for life. So, for the Patchwork Girl to exist, something about her must have been at one time alive. So, what was the patchwork? Probably human skin, like the Frankenstein Monster. In D.C. Comics' Swamp Thing, there is a creature called the Patchwork Man, and he was such a creation. Thus, I have no doubt in my mind that the Patchwork Girl was a dead girl, Pipt's wife's servant, brought back to life by the doctor's experiments.
Oz: Great Good Place, or Dark Fantasy?
Dorothy must have seen real horrors in her own life to cause her to seek a place like Oz to live in. In the novels Oz is a real place, not just a dream like in the movie! So the question isn't how sane or crazy Dorothy is but how tragic her life must have been for her to find Oz (filled with it's own horrors) better than life in Kansas. We don't know details behind the death of her parents, only that she is an Orphan being raised by her aunt and uncle. The poppy field in Oz indicated Opium addiction, which was common in those days. Dorothy fell asleep there, so was she subconsciously remembering that drugs killed her parents? Perhaps. Eventually, in the novels, she brings her aunt and uncle to Oz to live there with her. They weren't the cause of her distress. Likely, traumatic memories of her parents' demise coupled with the harsh reality of life on the prairie was the cause. That would make it seem better to be someplace else, even if that other place is just as dark. Oz may be dark, but it's the place Dorothy discovers for her family to live in, and that makes it magical to her. Dorothy's feelings towards Oz can be summed up as making the best of a hard lot in life no matter where it takes you. So a lot of the magic is just making do. Dorothy is deluded by the fact that she sees life as a child. When the time comes that she grows up, she'll see Oz's darkness just as she saw it's light. That is why the Oz novels never talk of her life past childhood: because that's when magic isn't quite so magical anymore, and the horrors of the world become obvious.
So, what begins as a cute fairy tale about one girl's adventures in a fantasy world ends up also revealed to be a dark coming of age story about how a girl with a tragic past is trying to cope, through fantasy, with life being just as horrible no matter where she travels. In that respect, it is not unlike the movie Pan's Labyrinth, which I'd highly recommend for anyone interested in the dark side of fairy tales. For an Oz movie truer to Frank L. Baum's novels, Return to Oz is ideal, and for a modern update of that I recommend Tin Man.