For the book sequels, and the series as whole, see Land of Oz
The Tin Man is so kindhearted that he can't stand to see a mouse killed by a predator...and so he takes out his ax and lops off the predator's head? How does that work?
Well, the mouse's death would be quite painful and graphic, where the beheading is relatively clean and painless, right?
Plus, the wildcat was knowingly trying to kill the mouse (all animals in Oz are sentient, remember), so really, he was saving her from a murderer.
Nick is the kindest fellow...but that kindness extends to protecting the innocent from harm. When innocents (or his True Companions) are in danger, all bets are off. Scarecrow's not much different, but he didn't have as many opportunities to show off the badass streak.
Just what did the Wicked Witch of the West do to earn the "wicked" title? That is, what did she do in the past (before Dorothy arrived) that made her so feared amongst the populace?
The usual stuff - a tyrannic rule with the help of the flying monkeys?
That's about right. She enslaved the people of Winkie Country. Likewise her sister had enslaved the Munchkins.
According some of the later books, Oz used to be ruled by a line of kings and queens. The last king disappeared and four wicked witches split up Oz among themselves. The Wicked Witches of the North and South were overthrown by The Good Witch of North and Glinda the Good.
Also, she's guilty of accessory to musical theater.
Tin doesn't rust.
Could be partially justified, in that one of W.W. Denslow's color illustrations shows the Tin Man's joints are a different color, perhaps indicating that his joints are made of a different metal.
Actually, The Tin Man is made from tin sheets — which are sheets of iron coated in tin, which is what tinsmiths use to make products from. The tin coating prevented the iron from rusting, but the Tin Man's coating may have chipped in places, and — more likely — is probably worn through at the joints.
Volkov's adaptation avoids this by making him made of iron instead of tin, but still.
The Tin Woodman's transformation occured gradually, with individual parts of himself being replaced as they were hacked off by his cursed axe. 1) How do you survive chopping off your own head (or) what injury is severe enough to require completely replacing your torso, but you still survive it? and 2) After the second or third limb, did he not think to just get rid of the axe? (or stop chopping wood for a living?)
1) No-one dies in Oz. 2) Munchkinland was probably in a caste system at the time.
So is the Emerald City made of emeralds after all? Supposedly the Wizard built it out of glass, and that's what the green glasses law is for, but about halfway through the second book all mentions of glasses disappear and the emeralds are treated as real afterwards. Continuity error?
I assume the Scarecrow made it into a city of emeralds.
You're mistaken on two counts. The city was never mentioned to have been built out of glass, and even in the first book, many of the buildings are described as being studded with emeralds and other gemstones. Without the glasses, the emeralds would still appear green while the rest of the city assumes its regular range of colors.
If Oz is real but is surrounded by the impassable Deadly Desert, how did enough people reach it to establish a viable population, let alone a civilization of five distinct nations and innumerable smaller cultures?
As I recall, Oz used to be connected to the other magical lands. A passing fairy queen made the impassable deserts and isolated Oz from the outside and enchanted the land. They may have been already people living there. The four nations came about when the last King of Oz disappeared along with his daughter and four Wicked Witches carved up Oz among themselves. Later two of the four Wicked Witches, North and the South, were overthrown by Glinda and an unnamed Good Witch. As to the fifth nation (The Emerald City), that was founded by the Wizard after he came to Oz.
Wicked (the book) gave a simpler, Hand Wave-ish explanation: the desert isn't really deadly; that's just a bit of political propaganda intended to discourage foreigners from intruding into Oz.
If the witch melts with water, how does she take a bath?
In the book, the reason water caused the witches to melt was because they're both so old that all the fluid in their body has dried up. No fluid means no sweat, and no sweat means there isn't any need for them to bathe.
Was Baum's statement that he wanted to write a fairy tale with less violence and gore than the classics sarcastic, or did he somehow miss all the violence and gore he put in his fairy tale? Characters getting beheaded and torn to shreds and attacked by wolves, bees, and flying monkeys is great, but it seems the opposite of what he intended.
His intention was to write the sort of fairy tale that would serve primarily as entertainment. When violence and gore were brought up in older stories, they tended to be described in great detail so as to instill a given lesson or moral in the reader. Baum wanted an upheaval of those kinds of moral-centric stories, which is why the violence in the Oz books is glanced over or moved past fairly quickly whenever it comes up.
Why didn't Dorothy enlist the winged monkeys to carry her to Glinda's castle from the Emerald City?
She’s what, 8? She just didn’t think of that.
When Dorothy first arrives in Oz, she goes outside immediately after her house lands. Soon after, we learn that one of the Munchkins sent for the Good Witch of the North after the house landed on the Wicked Witch of the East. If that's the case, how was it that they got back to greet Dorothy so quickly? According to a map of Oz, her house landed smack in the middle of the Land of the Munchkins, a pretty fair distance from the Gillikin Country where the good witch lives, and even if she can teleport, it would've taken time for the messenger to have delivered the news to her in the first place.
Maybe she was knocked unconscious for a while after the house landed?
Maybe some of the Munchkins have secret means of communicating with the Good Witch of the North quickly. Magic mirrors or something like that. The Good Witch of the North might even be running a spy network or resistance movement in the Wicked Witch of the East's territory. Sure, the Munchkins don't mention that, but after a long time being ruled by the Wicked Witch of the East, keeping things quiet and secret would be second nature.
The Witch of the West tells the Winged Monkeys to destroy Dorothy and her friends; they can't follow through on this since Dorothy is protected by the Witch of the North, so they bring her to the Witch of the West's castle instead. Later, Dorothy asks the Winged Monkeys to carry her back to Kansas; they tell her they can't fly across the Deadly Desert and then leave her exactly how they found her, while counting it as her second time using the Golden Cap even though they didn't do anything. Shouldn't they have at least taken her to the edge of the desert or something and then left her there?
While the Monkeys could not physically harm Dorothy themselves due to the Good Witch of the North's kiss, by bringing her to the Witch they're still putting Dorothy in the Witch's hands so that she can possibly destroy Dorothy herself through some other roundabout means. But the Deadly Desert is supposedly IMPOSSIBLE to cross, so taking Dorothy there would be pointless as she would be no closer to actually crossing it than if she stayed right where she was.
