Reading The Wizard of Oz can be a fresh experience even if you have seen the movie year after year on television. The book is very different from the movie and will give you a sense of Kansas politics in the 1890s as well as your first impressions of what might be called the Kansas character.
Lyman Frank Baum was born of wealthy parents in Chittenango, New York, on May 15, 1856. He grew up in Syracuse on his father's opulent estate "Rose Lawn." Having a weak heart, he stayed close to home and was indulged by his parents. He showed an early interest in writing, and with his brother published a newspaper called The Rose Lawn Home Journal. L. Frank also became interested in drama at an early age. When he was twelve he was sent to Peekskill Military Academy. After two miserable years he suffered a minor heart attack. From that time on, his education and career varied according to his interests: drama in his early twenties, his first success coming in 1882 when he was twenty-six years old; then newspaper reporting in Pennsylvania; then managing theaters owned by his father; then working as a salesman in his father's business.
In 1882 he married Maud Gage, a leading suffragist of the day. They had two sons and were reportedly happily married, though Baum was continually changing jobs and running into financial difficulties. For several years he could count on working for his father, but in 1887 his father died and left him a considerably exhausted, almost worthless estate.
In 1888 Baum took his family to Aberdeen, in what would become South Dakota, where he ran an unsuccessful dry goods store and then an unsuccessful newspaper, The Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer. According to David L. Greene and Dick Martin in their book The Oz Scrapbook: ". . . Baum edited the Pioneer with enthusiasm, writing witty verse and editorials, and a column called 'Our Landlady.'. . . In [one] week's installment a farmer tells the landlady that he has put green spectacles on his horses so they will think that they're eating grass rather than wood shavings. . . ." It is his experience in South Dakota that seems to have most informed his vision of the problems of the plains farmer.
By 1891 Baum had moved again—this time to Chicago. There he began writing children's books, publishing Father Goose, His Book in 1899 and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 1900. In its first edition, the pages of the Wonderful Wizard were printed in different colors to mark Dorothy's progress through Oz. The book was based on stories he told his sons, and it is said that when they first asked him where the story was happening, he searched the room for inspiration. He spotted a two-drawer filing cabinet, the drawers labelled A-N and O-Z. The second drawer gave Baum the name of that magical land which is so unlike Kansas, but tells so much about Kansas. More about that later.
After the success of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Baum wrote numerous other children's books, none in what was to become the Oz series, and none so successful as his first Oz book. Because of financial problems, he wrote a sequel to the Wonderful Wizard in 1904 called The Marvelous Land of Oz. A year later he bought an island off the California coast and made ambitious plans for Oz Island, a carnival park for children. This scheme failed while still in the planning stage.
Even though he received scores of letters demanding one, Baum did not write another Oz book until 1907. This book, Ozma of Oz, was followed by Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz in 1908, The Road to Oz in 1909, and The Emerald City of Oz in 1910. He tried to drop the series again, but his readers would not let him, and three years later in 1913, he wrote The Patchwork Girl of Oz. In 1914 Baum started a movie company to make silent films from the Oz books; the company collapsed after unsuccessfully launching five feature-length films. But the Oz series continued: The Tik-Tok Man of Oz (1914), The Scarecrow of Oz (1915), Rinkitink of Oz (1916), The Lost Princess of 0z (1917), The Tin Woodman of Oz (1918), The Magic of Oz (1919), and Glinda of 0z, published posthumously in 1920. Baum died May 6, 1919, nine days before his sixty-third birthday. After his death the series was continued: Ruth Plumly Thompson contributed nineteen Oz books; Baum's son Frank J. wrote two and published one; illustrator John R. Mill published three; Jack Snow published two Oz books and a large work entitled Who's Who in Oz (1954); Rachel Cosgrove wrote one book; and Lauren McGraw Wager and Eloise Jarvis McGraw wrote the last. At present the only Oz books in print are those by L. Frank Baum.
Although there is no evidence that Baum ever visited Kansas, the first chapter of his "fairy tale" gives one of the bleakest pictures of Kansas ever printed. This is good strategy, for it increases both Dorothy's and the reader's wonder at the world he's created in Oz. But it also makes some readers wonder why Dorothy is so bent on returning to her wasteland home. Oz seems in every way to be the opposite of Kansas: where there is little in Kansas there is plenty in Oz; where the landscape is bleak in Kansas it is lush, gorgeous, and various in Oz; where people are morose and unhappy in Kansas they are silly and happy in Oz; where life seems so seriously menacing and threatening and dull in Kansas it is carefree, unmenacing and exciting in Oz.
But Dorothy needs to get home to Kansas and pursues that goal all through the book. She is a Kansan and that is reason enough for her. Perhaps, as Sherwood Anderson wrote in his short story "The Egg": "People who have few possessions cling tightly to those they have. That is one of the facts that make life so discouraging." Dorothy clings most to Toto, but also to the notion of returning to her poor Aunt and Uncle. And, of course, she knows she is all they have. Finally, the reader has to accept as a given her strong desire to return home, for it is not well explained in the book.
Another given that the reader accepts is that Dorothy will finally return home, that her natural and innocent goodness will triumph over every obstacle. Because of this given, and the manifestations of it in the silver shoes and the kiss from the good witch of the North, there is little tension in the book. There are some good chases and some points at which the reader wonders what will become of Dorothy and her companions, but unlike the movie, which heightens all the scary drama into nightmare, the book emphasizes the resourcefulness and even superiority of Dorothy and her companions. For example, the Winged Monkeys, so frightening in the movie, are rational and courteous in the book. They are unwilling slaves of the Wicked Witch of the West. When they find Dorothy, their leader tells them:
"We dare not harm this little girl . . . for she is protected by the Power of Good, and that is greater than the Power of Evil. All we can do is carry her to the castle of the Wicked Witch and leave her there."
So, carefully and gently, they lifted Dorothy in their arms and carried her swiftly through the air until they came to the castle, where they set her down upon the front doorstep.
Thus the winged monkeys understand what we have known all along—the power of good (Dorothy's goodness) is greater than the power of evil (all the obstacles working against Dorothy's safe arrival home). The illustrations by W. W. Denslow reinforce this lack of tension (the witch looks like a pirate in drag), as does part of L. Frank Baum's introduction: "Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wondertales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incidents."
Top of Page | Bottom of PageThe only truly disagreeable incident is the first chapter, wherein the reader sees such a sober, gray, unsmiling, dusty, flat Kansas that Oz comes as a relief. But Baum's other assertion, that his book dispenses with morality, needs to be challenged. First, the reader's knowledge that good will always triumph over evil is a kind of moral in itself. Second, there are lessons to be learned from the book. The foremost is that the powers we seek outside of ourselves—brains, heart, courage and home—are there inside of us, or close at hand. Ultimately, the scarecrow is the most thoughtful of the group; the tinman is the most sentimental, crying when he steps on a beetle; the lion is the most courageous, jumping over a wide ditch and offering to fight the Kalidahs; and, of course, Dorothy is wearing the silver shoes which she has but to clap together to get home to Aunt Em. The lesson is that if we exercise the faculties we want to have, we'll find that we do have them.
Another lesson is in Dorothy's openness and honesty. She is not even afraid to express anger. In fact, each time she does, things turn out well. She stands up to the lion and she throws water on the witch, to name two examples. Last of all, Dorothy's strong desire to return home because she cares about Aunt Em and Uncle Henry is another moral, or lesson. Part of her charm is her thoughtfulness for others. In the next to the last chapter she tells Glinda, the good witch: "My greatest wish now . . . is to get back to Kansas, for Aunt Em will surely think something dreadful has happened to me, and that will make her put on mourning; and unless the crops are better this year than they were last I am sure Uncle Henry cannot afford it."
Obviously Dorothy's strength and steadfastness are based in large part on her practical nature. She spends much of the book fairly unruffled by the events befalling her. As Baum says in his chapter "How Dorothy Saved the Scarecrow": "The sun shone bright and the birds sang sweet and Dorothy did not feel nearly as bad as you might think a little girl would who had been suddenly whisked away from her own country and set down in the midst of a strange land." And there are countless other examples: her concern over how much food she has and thus her relief that the scarecrow doesn't eat; her cleanliness and formal nature, which is shown as she breakfasts and washes her hands in the stream that is always nearby; and, the best one, the way she draws another bucket of water and throws it over the "mess" that is the melted wicked witch, sweeping it out the door before she announces the witch's death. Like a good Kansas girl, she does her kitchen chores before joining her friends.
Dorothy's openness, her concern for others, her practical nature, her cleanliness, her steadfastness and reserves of strength when all seems lost—only once does she come close to breaking down and losing heart—all seem a model for the Kansan. Take note of Dorothy's traits; they will appear again in other novels, particularly the novels of pioneering.
A final word about Oz. In every way it seems the opposite of Kansas. So although Kansas is described in only one chapter, in a sense it is being described all through the book—Kansas is what Oz is not. But there are many parts of Oz that seem to come directly from the experiences of a typical Midwestern child: the different colored countries call to mind the old road maps and atlases on which every state is a different color; the dainty china knick-knacks on Auntie's shelf come alive in The Dainty China Country and are still fragile and too precious. Look for other examples of how Oz reflects Kansas, Kansans and the Midwest. In part of your reading assignment you'll see how a high school teacher, Henry M. Littlefield of New York, looked for and found a whole parable of midwestern politics in this simple fairy tale. I've tried to tell you some of the things I've found. I hope the study questions will help you to your own insights.
Text:
The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum
E-reserve readings:
"The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism,"
Henry M. Littlefield
"Kansas," Carl Becker
"Portrait of a Changing Kansas,"
Kenneth S. Davis
"Oz and Kansas Culture," Thomas
Fox Averill
Reminder: Instructions on how to access these readings are found on page xxii of this study guide.
Top of Page | Bottom of PageAfter reading the "Parable on Populism" article, the "Oz and Kansas Culture" article, and the essays by Becker and Davis, write 3-5 pages in which you discuss all the ways in which the Wizard of Oz works—as children's book, as utopian novel, as character study of Dorothy and Kansans, as political novel, as America's best-loved film, as the quintessentially American story of finding home. Can it sustain all these levels and still simply be the "modern fairy tale" Baum claims it to be. You may refer to other similar works in your discussion—from Alice in Wonderland to Harry Potter.