Many people know the story of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but less are familiar with the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, which is told in Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. The novel was published in 1996 and written by Gregory Maguire. Though on the surface it seems like another fairytale, this story has a much deeper meaning. Through the use of content, symbolism, and context, there is much more to The Wicked Witch of the West.…
The Wizard of Oz is like the Odyssey because both Dorothy and Odysseus are determined and anxious to return home. Odysseus and Dorothy both meet characters along the journey who help them and evil characters trying to not let them reach home. Good characters who give advice in the Wizard of Oz are the munchkins who show Dorothy where to go to get to the Emerald city to ask the wizard how she will be able to return home. Good characters who give advice and help Odysseus are Athena and King Aleous.…
men as protagonists” (195). The protagonist of Garfield and the Wicked Wizard is a lazy,…
The book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was always thought to be a child’s tale, a “modernized fairy tale” until Henry M. Littlefield wrote an article about how The Wizard of Oz was actually an allegory for the Populist era. Littlefield believed that each character and significant place in the book correlated with a person or place in the Populist era. L. Frank Baum wrote this children’s book as a political allegory, whether he intentionally did it we are not sure. However, the unwavering proof that there are connections between The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the Populist era lead most people to believe that Baum was a political and social genius as he intertwined important people and places into a children’s book, masking the connection for many years.…
In the movie The Wizard of Oz created by L. Frank Baum, Lion had wanted courage, he was going to go with Dorothy to get it from the Wizard, though he did to realize that you cannot receive courage and that he already had it. To start off, Lion wanted to go on a journey to Emerald City with Dorothy. This needed a great deal of courage to do, because he did not know what would happen, good things and bad things would happen, but he agreed to go. Next, as Dorothy was locked in the tower Lion graciously went with Toto to go and save her. They would journey through the castle, risking getting capture, the Wicked Witch was searching for them and he knew if they were caught then they would be imprisoned. Lastly, in the end of the movie, while talking…
Herman Goering thought that no Air force or military in the world could stand up to that of the Nazi Luftwaffe. His boastful statement was made with well acclaim in that the Luftwaffe was a very powerful aerial force, but he was being narrow-minded when he made this statement against the production potential of the United States, which has time and time again has proved to be the most powerful nation in the world. Without the military production of the United States, the Allies would not have had a chance against the Germans and their powerful forces. Through many changes, the labor and production force of the U.S. changed from producing civilian goods, to producing military goods. These goods were supplied to all nations of the Allied Powers, and the United States quickly became the most important factor in World War II.…
Joseph Campbell describes a hero’s journey as a cycle where the person is a hero from birth. This holds true for the character of Huck Finn because he fits the description of a hero in the book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. There are different parts of the hero’s journey that can be applied to Huck, such as the first stage which is known as the Innocent World of Childhood. A stage further on in the journey is the Initiation while the last stage is known as the Freedom to Live. All three of the stages can be used to describe a specific time in Huck’s life.…
In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Huckleberry once says “Human beings can be awful cruel to one another”. Though Huck has seen some fairly awful things during his travels with Jim during the course of his adventure along the river, his life at home was no better. With an abusive father, Huck grew up in a hostile and violent household with an alcohol depend father and no mother. The final straw in Huck’s decision to move out was the night that his father attempted to kill Huck in a drunken rage. After Huck’s escape from his father, Huck stumbles upon Jim, a slave and an acquaintance of Huck’s. They sent out on a journey in which Huck experiences thing that lead him to believe that human beings can be a cruel kind. An…
The Scarecrow’s not that bright, let’s face it. In The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, author L. Frank Baum develops his conflict around this major point. He creates this conflict using a simple diction, sparse imagery, a mocking, humorous tone, and more or less direct characterization of the Scarecrow as a foolish child. Finally, he uses this conflict to argue against the growing upper class, which in the early 1900s when The Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman was written was growing rapidly and contributing to a falling standard of living for the middle and lower classes.…
“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” is a modern fairy tale first published in 1900 by Lyman Frank Baum. Since its inception it has gained many political interpretations comparing the fairy tale to the political, economic, and social events in America in the late 19th century. (1) One of the most popular political interpretations of the fairy tale is “The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism” written by Henry Littlefield in which he outlines allegories in the story regarding the Populist movement during the late 19th century. (2)…
The once innocent moral tale used to teach little girls a lesson has developed into many convoluted adaptations that apply some of modern societies most problematic issues. Both the Perrault and Grimm version of Little Red Riding Hood both point out the consequences of straying of the path. While Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood ends with the wolf having eaten the innocent little girl, Grimm’s Little Red Cap has a hero who swoops in to save her and grandma. The movie, Freeway (1996) directed by Matthew Bright, subverts qualities found in the fairytales and puts a modern twist on it. Vanessa Lutts, our new Little Red Riding Hood, strays of the path, saves herself, and is definitely not the innocent little girl that Grimm and Perrault imagined;…
Zyerre Jenkins American Literature August 17, 2016 There are a lot of symbols and symbolic meaning to the person, places, and things in "The Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum. Four main symbols are the colors red, blue, green, and yellow. Each color has a different meaning and contribution to the story. It begins with the color blue. The color blue in "The Wizard of Oz" was owned by the munchkins that lived on the east. The story begins with Dorothy's house crushing the wicked witch of the east. The munchkins praised Dorothy for this and treated her very well. The color blue typically is associated with being mellow, calm, and open. The munchkins were all three of these things when they greeted Dorothy. The munchkins gave her a place to stay and…
The Wizard of Oz (1939) embodies the true magic of film, as it has the ability to sweep its audiences out of their seats and straight into the land of Oz with a young Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland). Director Victor Fleming successfully carries out this transformation by use of vibrant color schemes, ornate set and scenery design, impeccable costuming, and captivatingly catchy soundtrack. Not to mention the brilliant acting of each and every cast member that makes suspension of disbelief an absolute breeze for anyone that views Wizard of Oz.…
Veracity in storytelling is a defining theme of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” The story is distantly removed from the reader—Crayon has found the story in Diedrich Knickerbocker’s papers, who is dead, and who at the end of the story writes that he heard it from an old gentleman, who claimed to not have even believed half of it himself, ultimately getting much of the story from primary or even other secondary sources. Thus, even where the story is told with confidence, the narrator has given us reasons to doubt evrything. We become critical readers, unlike Crane, who believes the ghost stories he reads.…
This popular and well-documented reading sees The Wizard of Oz as being about the collapse of the Populist Movement in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. In this scenario, Dorothy represents the common citizen, the Tin Man is the industrial worker, the Scarecrow is a stand-in for farmers, and the Cowardly Lion is politician William Jennings Bryan (seen by many at the time as being all talk and no action). They travel along the Yellow Brick Road (the gold standard) to see the Wizard, who could represent President Grover Cleveland or William McKinley. (“Oz” itself is the abbreviation for ounce, which is the standard for measuring gold. The green of the Emerald City represents the dollar.) The Wicked Witch of the East represents bankers, and the Wicked Witch of the West — who, remember, gets killed by water — is drought. This theory, first put forth in the sixties by a high-school teacher named Henry Littlefield (whose original essay you can read here), has since been debunked, yet still maintains a hold over many.*…