The Wizard of Oz is NON-FICTION!
Stephen Stink
The Wizard of Oz is NON-Fiction.
This not the first analysis of Lymen Frank Baum's book called:
The wonderful wizard of Oz. Nor will it be the last. Everybody knows
about the 1939 movie with Judy Garland. The movie was not that faithful
to the book. So what else is new? Lymen Baum wrote many sequels to the
first book but was never filmed. Why? Because it became oblivious that
what Baum was writing was not children fantasy stories but a political
allegory that supported progressive politics. Baum was a Populist for
the Democratic party of the 19th century. To get around censorship many
writers use fiction to promote a subversive ideology. It is all based
on symbolism and allegories. Most critics will just dismiss it as just
fanciful imagination. It is a great cover for an alibi. As the 20th
century progressed in the U.S.A, censorship eased up. This created an
open society, which the religious right wants to curtail. They have
called it an, "Culture war". They want to turn the clock to the
18th century where Christian morality made society repressive. People
like Mark Twain, George Orwell and Baum wanted to make a free society
and warned the readers about the dangers of authoritarianism. Let's
go over the characters of Baum's book, shall we?
1. Dorothy: The protagonist of the book. She represented the naiveté
in all of us.
2. Toto: Represented Natural Law. The little dog represented the earth,
environment and the animals of life.
3. The Wicket Witch of the East: Represented Fascism and the exploitive
capitalist class.
4. The Good Witch of the West: Now this character is very
contradictory. It must be stated here that Baum was a sexist. He would
write a book after Oz called: The marvelous land of Oz. This was a
satire of the Suffragette movement. How can a witch be good? Moral
Relativism that's how. It is a philosophical belief in Ethics. This
belief proposes in order to combat evil it is justified to do evil acts
against evil. That is part of the Bush doctrine. The character has a
very clavier attitude toward evil and acts like an angle that is
omniscient. This was an attack on liberal snobbery.
5. The Tin Woodman: This was the industrial proletariat. Many social
critics accused the working class of having no heart.
6. The Scarecrow: He represented pseudo-intellectuals that had straw
man arguments. One critic said these people should get a brain.
7. The cowardly Lion: W call these people now a days: Chicken hawks.
These types advocate war but never will be seen dead on a battlefield.
The lion tries to get courage.
8. OZ. This character is based on the Republican president: McKinley.
Who wanted to impress America he was an iron clad fearless leader but
in person was just as human as everybody else. He used Machiavellian
methods to persuade people that they didn't really need Government to
help them out but should be self-reliant.
9. Ruby Slippers: The knowledge of Marxism.
10. Emerald City: The United States of America.
Many farmers in that time period wanted to leave their dreary lives and
live in the city. But Baum wanted to tell them: there is no place like
home. In other words: The life of a rich man is no different than a
poor man's. I predict that L.Frank.Baum books will replace the King
James Bible in a hundred years.
Lange Industries
The trees being analogous to the way the native Americans were treated.
The tin woodsman chops them up because Baum believes that the native
Americans should have given up the fight and died like men.
The dainty china country of course being analogous to the regime in
china at the time, and how delicate the empire was. And so on, and so forth.
Not the first time this has come up, and I don't want to sound rude, but
have you ever read the book? If so, you made a mistake with the ruby
slippers. They were silver in the book. If you're going to argue the
populist line, it makes sense to start talking about the silver shoes on
the yellow road, and how that equates to a gold standard.
But something I've never seen is how you draw those same conclusions
with the later books.
How about Land of Oz? Where the princess is hidden and raised by a
witch. The daughter of Pastoria? Could that somehow be an allegory to
world war 1 and arch duke Ferdinand?
An army of girls taking over the emerald city with knitting needles.
Obviously making fun of feminism. But they do lose in the end, only to
be replaced by a female ruler. An alegory to suffrage, perhaps? Pro or con?
How about Ozma of Oz, where dorothy finds herself on a chicken coop in a
storm, on the ocean. She's taking uncle henry to Australia where his
unknown disease can be taken care of. An argument for socialized
medicine... perhaps?
I think all of this however goes much deeper than baum.
You can in fact find politics... anywhere you care to look for them. A
story is not the intent of the author, but the interpretation of the
reader. For example, do you honestly think anyone even thought that this
whole business of the world being created in six days would ever come
into dispute while it was written?
Same goes here.
Allegory is relative.
The theory is horseshit.