Rule Of Symbolism / Land of Oz

Sometimes the worst enemies in your life are only as scary as you make them out to be.

Literature

The Original L. Frank Baum books

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

• The novel's is too long to be a parable and not quite didactic enough to be an allegory. Still, the main characters (Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Lion) embody traditional American values. Dorothy's is the most important one, self-reliance. Throughout her time in Oz, Dorothy is singularly focused on getting home to her uncle Henry and aunt Em. It's not something she knows how to do herself, so she seeks help from a variety of characters, including the good witches and the Wizard of Oz. Her goal is thwarted at seemingly every turn, but she never gives up. Whatever wrench is thrown her way, she keeps calm and carries on. Failure is not an option. In the end, she gets back to Kansas by drawing from the power of her silver shoes, which she had from the moment she landed in Oz. "Your Silver Shoes will carry you over the desert," the Good Witch of the South tells Dorothy. "If you had known their power you could have gone back to your Aunt Em the very first day you came to this country". Turns out Dorothy doesn't need the help of the Wizard (who's a fraud anyway) to get home. She can just walk there on her own two feet.
• The Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Lion also embody traditional American values. The Scarecrow symbolizes intelligence and cunning; he's always coming up with good ideas that help the group out of bad situations. The Tin Woodman symbolizes compassion. He's the conscience of the group, always making sure that their actions don't hurt anyone else. The Lion symbolizes bravery. In a pinch, he's always willing to turn around and fight to the death. What's interesting about these three characters as symbols is that they are plagued by self-doubt. They see themselves as incompetent and incomplete, which causes them a lot of personal pain. The sense of inadequacy also makes them more relatable as characters since many readers will have struggled with similar feelings. Blind to the traits and skills they already possess, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Lion expect to receive a brain, a heart, and courage as rewards for a job well done. The Wizard, hack that he is, presents them each with prizes: a brain consisting of "a measure of bran…mixed with a great many pins and needles"; a "pretty heart, made entirely of silk and stuffed with sawdust"; and a dose of courage that appears to be more or less a shot of whiskey. All three are empty objects symbolizing traits that the characters already have. So basically, the take away is that the characters' focus on the Wizard's material gifts is misguided. If they would only look inward, they would recognize their strengths. Instead they seek two unnecessary things: approval from an outside source and material rewards that they don't need. The author's message is that true happiness and achievement is not about the things you acquire. It's what's on the inside that really counts.
• It's not that difficult. The road symbolizes life. And on the yellow brick road that is life, things aren't always going to be easy. As you travel, you'll make friends and you'll make enemies. The further you go, the more you come to know yourself. As Dorothy leaves for the Emerald City, the Good Witch of the North tells her, "It is a long journey, through a country that is sometimes pleasant and sometimes dark and terrible". Dorothy and her friends see some beautiful sights, like fields of flowers and magnificent cities. But they also encounter a lot of obstacles and occasionally fall off course. There are friends they can count on, like the field mice (and each other). There are enemies who become friends over time, like the Winkies and the Winged Monkeys. And then there are the people you think are your friends but who aren't exactly what they seem, like the Great Wizard himself. As they travel, Dorothy and her companions often feel happy and hopeful. Sometimes they feel alone and afraid, but the dark moments always pass. The message seems clear: if you stay true to yourself and stay on your path—as in, keep on moving—good things will eventually come.
• But the Wizard of Oz himself could be taken to symbolize crooked politicians. "Seeing me come from the clouds, [they] thought I was a great Wizard," he tells Dorothy. "Of course I let them think so, because they were afraid of me, and promised to do anything I wished them to do. Just to amuse myself, and keep the good people busy, I ordered them to build this City, and my Palace; they did it willingly and well". In a way, he's an unqualified leader who lies to the public to get what he wants. Once he's "in office," the Wizard continues this strategy, unconcerned with who he might hurt in the process. "When you came to me I was willing to promise anything if you would only do away with the other Witch," he tells Dorothy. "But, now that you have melted her, I am ashamed to say that I cannot keep my promises" (15.74). Once his scam is uncovered, the Wizard "resigns" from office, fleeing town in lieu of owning up to his mistakes. He never comes clean to the huge population that he has been so dishonest with, maintaining until the end that he is not a crook.

Non-canon works

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

• There's water symbolism and imagery at any rate in the novel. Oz suffers a severe drought for a large part of the novel, which is significant. Water is all about Oz's opposing regions. In this novel, water is both a giver of life and a cause of death; it has very strong positive and negative connotations attached to it. Elphaba's weird connection to water helps illuminate water's positive and negative connotations here. We all remember the Witch screeching "I'm Melting!" at the end of the 1939 film. And water definitely causes Elphaba pain, fear, and eventually death. But she's also oddly attracted to and enthralled by water throughout the book. Many of the instances of water imagery in the book tie in to significant things in Elphaba's life: her magical mirror, Fiyero, and the Vinkus, when she finally becomes a Witch. It seems that Elphaba experiences a perverse response to life-giving and baptismal water because of her unique position. Elphaba is a hybrid of two worlds and doesn't fully belong in either one or the other. Since Water really represents the "Other World" to Elphaba (with its "mythical sea"), it makes sense that she would react to it differently from anyone else in Oz (except for the other person who doesn't fully belong there: the Wizard). The three "foreigners" here – the Wizard, the Witch, and Dorothy – are arguably more important to Oz than anyone else. Water symbolism and imagery helps emphasize their anomalous statuses, especially Elphaba's.
• The shoes in Wicked are not ruby slippers, rather they're described as hard to tell its color and not really matters as its effect was dazzling. Rubies are a slightly different animal in this book. Turtle Heart probably describes their symbolism best: "To look in glass," said Turtle Heart, pointing to the roundel he had made as a toy for Elphaba, "is to see the future, in blood and rubies." The shoes are the one thing the Witch wants above all else, both in the movie and the book, but Elphaba wants the shoes for slightly different reasons than her movie counterpart. While the movie's shoes were symbols of power, the book's shoes are symbols of love, acceptance, and family. Above all else, Nessa's shoes represent Elphaba's need to be accepted, loved, and considered important, particularly to her father. But aside from being related to themes of family and acceptance, they also, as in the movie, represent power. Interestingly, though, that becomes more of an excuse for Elphaba to justify her obsession with getting the shoes from Dorothy.
• The mirror that Turtle Heart makes for Elphaba as a child helps to "illuminate" themes of sight and witnessing in this book. And themes of sight are also interestingly linked to childhood here. As a child, Elphaba is captivated by the mirror. Aside from Turtle Heart, she is the only member of the family who can see things in it. What's more, these two characters can also fully understand what they are seeing. Looking into the mirror prompts Elphaba to say her first and favorite childhood word, "horrors". As an adult, Elphaba not only loses her mirror, she also loses the ability to fully "see" as she did as a child. Instead she becomes ruthlessly practical, denying the existence of souls, other worlds, "Unnamed" and unseen gods, and occasionally magic itself. The adult Elphaba who has lost the mirror becomes blind in a sense, and she's aware of that fact. She often describes herself as not "visionary" or as lacking in imagination or a sense of deeper meaning to things. When Elphaba regains the mirror from the dwarf, she is only able to see the present in it. Again, her adult vision has been truncated. But it's notable that she gets the mirror back at a time in her life when she is revisited by people from her past, learns more about her family history from Nanny, and starts exploring memories from her youth. What sight she regains seems related to her regained access to her past and her youth. But mirrors aren't just for seeing events and places; they are also for seeing the self. Ultimately, Turtle Heart's mirror represents the ability not just to see the world but to understand it, and to understand one's place in it.
• Elphaba's familiars are a swarm of killer bees, a talking but taciturn monkey, some ominous crows, and an anti-social dog named Killjoy. Of course these are a Witch's familiars, so the creepy and weird factor is probably fitting. Elphaba's familiars demonstrate how appearances can be deceiving, which is a running theme throughout the book. All of these animals seem violent and mean, but they actually prove to be loyal, helpful, and even loving around Elphaba and her family. Elphaba definitely has a gift for dealing with animals, and it's no accident that her major political crusade involves animal (and Animal) rights.
• The Grimmerie is a book of power, destruction, and mystery. We're never really sure exactly what it is or where it came from. Does its existence mean that magic exists in our own "Other World" as well as in Oz? Did Oz make the Grimmerie magical? Is the book inherently dangerous, or are the people using it the ones who are dangerous? The Grimmerie is symbolically linked with the Wizard, and thus with themes of power and corruption. It's rather ironic that Elphaba uses the Wizard's book to conduct her experiments in genetic engineering. Ultimately, she uses the Grimmerie to play god, much as the Wizard wishes to. In fact, it's never fully explained why Elphaba, respecter of animal and Animal rights and dignity, conducts experiments on monkeys to make them fly. Her "speech therapy" sessions with Chistery aimed to prove he had a "spirit," but the flight experiments seem to have no such motive. However, the fact that Elphaba uses the Grimmerie for these experiments highlights its dangerous power and potential corruption.
• The Clock of the Time Dragon doesn't actually tell time, it puts on semi-pornographic and riot-inducing shows, and it becomes the centerpiece of a very bizarre new religion: tiktokism, which seems to promote having a good time and using machinery. Rather than telling time, instead it tells people secrets from their past and present and predicts their future. Elphaba gets a private viewing of her very own life story with the clock and sees the legend of her namesake, the truth of her paternity, and a future shrouded in darkness. Oddly enough, the dwarf gives her back her mirror as a parting gift, perhaps suggesting that Elphaba should use it to divine her own future. But while Elphaba's clock-told life story seems fairly accurate, the clock often exaggerates and even outright lies. It seems to demonstrate that people can't really be trusted to respond well to either truth or lies. And the clock is an interesting hybrid of many of the major themes (power, communication, fate, evil) and religions (the myth of the dragon that dreamed the world, tiktokism) in the book. As a hybrid of themes and symbolic imagery, it's no wonder the book's other hybrid, Elphaba, is born inside the clock and likened to a young dragon during her childhood. If a dragon is lying beneath the earth, dreaming everything up, then perhaps Elphaba herself has more power to determine the shape of her world than even she realizes.
• It's fitting that color motifs play such a major role in the novel. After all, color is one of the hallmarks of the 1939 movie. Movie Oz may be all about a rainbow, but the Oz of Wicked really emphasizes two colors: red and green. Turtle Heart probably best sums up what red represents here, with his multiple references to blood, rubies, and the Wizard's red balloon in the first volume. Red is the color of blood, greed, death, and power run amuck. It is also frequently associated with Nessa's shoes, even though the exact color of the shoes is indeterminate in the novel. The shoes are also described in terms of blood. These shoes are key to Elphaba's downfall in a way; her obsession with them drives her to do some crazy things. And the shoes also give Nessa a dangerous sense of self-importance and independence, which fuels her dictatorship in Munchkinland. Above all else, red is the color of a very dangerous kind of power and violence here. Green is a bit more complex: If red is characterized by a series of synonyms (power, blood, greed, violence), then green is associated with a series of opposites. Green is linked to both Elphaba and to Oz itself. We start hearing about the connections between Oz and green early on in the novel. We also have a series of important green objects that appear: the Miracle Elixir bottle, the Emerald City, the Clock of the Time Dragon, etc. Ironically, green Elphaba is seen as an abnormality, a freak, an alien in the very "green" land of Oz. In a way, Elphaba is a more "of Oz," with her green skin, than anyone else in the book. And Elphaba is also associated with the green dragon who is dreaming up the world. But Elphaba is definitely an oddity, someone who doesn't quite belong in Oz. What's interesting is that the Emerald City is depicted in the same way. It's a paradox: the city is sort of the centerpiece of Oz, but it's also seen as out of place and weird. Elphaba and the Emerald City share an odd sort of symbiosis. It's also worth noting that the Wizard, Elphaba's biological father and the source of her strange hybridity, is most likely Irish, as we learn during Elphaba's dream sequence on. Ireland is of course known as the "Emerald Isle" and is tied to the color green. Green Elphaba got a double dose of the color, from Oz itself and from the "Other World" that she's tied to. Green may ultimately be both a color of belonging and of alienation.
• Names play a hugs role in the world of Wicked. Names and titles have a lot of symbolic power here: they define who people are and how they are perceived by others. They also symbolize the power of self-reinvention. We can really see this with the three major characters who undergo dramatic personal changes and have name changes to match: Galinda becomes Glinda, Elphaba becomes the Wicked Witch of the West, and Nessa becomes the Eminent Thropp/Witch of the East. It's notable that characters both choose and are given names here. Galinda of course chooses to become Glinda, which is her way of representing the internal changes she undergoes after Dr. Dillamond's murder and Ama Clutch's slow decline and death. Elphaba, on the other hand, is continually given names by other people: her resistance/terrorist cell calls her "Fae"; her family and friends call her Fabala and Elphie; Princess Nastoya declares her a "Witch"; the public at large grant her the moniker Wicked Witch of the West. Elphaba is thus defined and determined by the people around her, and she often accepts these names. Names and naming help demonstrate how Elphaba isn't always wholly in control of her own identity, which is rather fitting. After all, as the Wicked Witch of the West, she is almost more myth than reality.

Film

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

• The yellow brick road is portrayed as a symbol of the journey of life that everyone has to take, filled with thrills, dangers, deceptions and surprises. In Dorothy's case, it's a journey where she discovers the lure of adventure, the exciting possibilities outside her sheltered life, and a lesson about the real meaning of growing up and the comforts of home. The road seems exciting at first but ultimately leads to the realization that the wizard was just an ordinary man and that Dorothy's sparkling dreams sometimes are not all they are cracked up to be.
• The ruby slippers are especially notable considering they were silver in Baum's original book. Symbolically, they represent Dorothy's potential power, which she didn't know how to use at the time. That might explain why Glinda sent her off to see the Wizard. Only after all of her adventures, and the attendant self-reliance and confidence that comes with taking out two wicked witches single-handedly, could she tap into that power and use it to get what she wants.
• The Wicked Witch herself is a walking piece of symbolism. She is basically a personification of someone who causes misery and takes great joy in taking away innocence in any way they can. But she also serves as a lesson that the scary people in someone's life are only as scary as they let them be. Dorothy just needed a little bravery and the right instincts (in this case, coming to Scarecrow's aid when the Witch tried to burn him alive) to take her down, and it was surprisingly easy. That's why the water melted her.
• The cyclone is a catalyst for change, both in terms of the landscape and in terms of the characters. That Miss Gulch morphs into the Wicked Witch in the middle of it was intentional, along with Dorothy learning the meaning of the phrase "Be Careful What You Wish For". It also stresses the fact that change is inevitable, and can't be stopped or halted, and you need to adjust to it.
• Dorothy was looking for a physical location, but her three teammates are a different story — The Scarecrow wants intelligence, the Lion wants guts and The Tin Man wants a heart. The film's central twist is that the characters actually had those traits, and the journey helped them to find these traits and use them to help their buddies out of their various scrapes. Like the ruby slippers, the gifts they get at the end are just symbolic representations of their own capacity to think, love and stand up to the Big Bad.
• In the beginning, Kansas was very stifling to Dorothy, hence the sepia shade representing how boring and indifferent it was to her. Oz on the other head was popping with incredibly vibrant colors and constant singing and dancing. This gives the sense of a bright, fresh, and amazing universe that Dorothy was seeing for the first time. But Oz started to reveal certain disturbing things, such as the witch and her winged monkeys. Kansas may be dull, but at least it was safe, and warming. Plus when Dorothy returns to Kansas, the sepia background looked more stable and less depressing.