[In the following essay, Hudlin analyzes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in terms of the structure of Joseph Campbell's heroic myth.]

L. Frank Baum's masterpiece, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, has been the subject of psychoanalytical, sociological, political, and even economic analyses. Few critics, however, have attempted to examine it from a truly mythological or philosophical perspective. Lacking such a perspective, some critics have found Baum's writings too episodic, while others have been more concerned with what Oz [The Wonderful Wizard of Oz] reveals about Baum himself, than with the aesthetic dimensions of the story qua story.¹ While these psycho-social aspects are important, they do not demonstrate how the incidents of the story contribute to its unity, binding it together and driving the plot forward. They do not explain why the book provides such satisfaction to readers of all ages. The value of the interpretation which follows is that it does attempt to satisfy all these concerns.

The thesis of the present essay is that The Wonderful Wizard of Oz follows very closely the structure of the heroic myth as defined by Joseph Campbell.² The adoption of Campbell's perspective has an immediate heuristic value since, as a result, it becomes possible to demonstrate that Oz is not episodic at all, but a highly unified work of art, and, hence, formally satisfying on a purely aesthetic level. Simultaneously, it becomes possible to show that the implicit theme of the work—touching as it does upon eternally recurring problems and values such as love and sacrifice, the conflict of generations, life and death—provides an even deeper satisfaction for the reader on psychic and spiritual levels insofar as these concerns are shared by people of all ages and temperaments. Finally, the use of Campbell's model provides the basis for a more comprehensive, coherent, and sensitive reading of the tale.

Campbell divides mythic stories into three major parts: departure-initiation-return. This pattern is Campbell's abstract of the world-wide nature myths concerning the dying and resurrected savior god: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won; the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

Campbell divides each part of the mythic structure into further elements. The subdivisions of the departure have to do with the crossing of the threshold between the two worlds: the ordinary world and the magical world of the adventure. Sometimes the hero or heroine crosses this threshold willingly; sometimes, as in the case with Dorothy, the hero is taken or carried across by an external force. At the threshold, the hero encounters a guardian whom he must either defeat or conciliate. In Dorothy's case it is the Wicked Witch of the East who is defeated when Dorothy's house, carried by a tornado, drops on her. Either before or after the crossing of the first threshold, the hero receives supernatural aid in the form of a magical helper, usually a goddess or an old woman. For Dorothy it is the Good Witch of the North, who acts as her fairy godmother and provides amulets against the forces of darkness Dorothy will encounter. In myth, other helpers, who embody the destiny of the hero, join the quest as well. Dorothy's helpers are the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion, whose subplots adumbrate the main plot of Dorothy's adventures.

Beyond the threshold, as part of the initiation, the mythic hero is put to various tests and threatened by various forces. Dorothy must deal with an extraordinary number of natural and supernatural opponents, including fighting trees, killer wolves, deadly bees, hammer-headed creatures who strike out with their heads, poisonous poppy fields, and fierce Kalidahs (tiger-bears).

Next, the hero undergoes a supreme ordeal and wins his reward. The quest is not complete unless the hero returns, with or without the blessing of the powers he has encountered, and brings the boon that restores the world. Dorothy, having redeemed the land of Oz, returns to Kansas and brings to it her life-renewing magic, redeeming both the land and the spiritual lives of Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. In fact, in Baum's sequels (The Land of Oz, Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz), Dorothy is enthroned as a princess of Oz and a mistress of both worlds, traveling back and forth at will.

DEPARTURE

The mythic hero, as Campbell points out, is a person possessing unusual gifts, which enable him to overcome deficiencies either in himself or in the world. In the beginning of Oz, Dorothy's whole world is in a fallen state and cries out for redemption. Dorothy represents its only hope for salvation:

When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side … Even the grass was not green for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint, and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else. …

When Aunt Em came there to live she was a young, pretty wife. The sun and wind had changed her too. They had taken the sparkle from her eyes and left them a somber gray; they had taken the red from her lips and cheeks, and they were gray also. When Dorothy, who was an orphan, first came to her, Aunt Em had been so startled by the child's laughter that she would scream and press her hand upon her heart whenever Dorothy's merry voice reached her ears; and she still looked at the little girl with wonder that she could find anything to laugh at.

Uncle Henry never laughed. He worked hard from morning till night and did not know what joy was. He was gray also, from his long beard to his rough boots, and he looked stern and solemn, and rarely spoke.

It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her surroundings … Toto played all day long, and Dorothy played with him, and loved him dearly.³

The fact that Dorothy is an orphan whose parentage and origins are obscure and mysterious is essential to the further development of the story, as it prepares the reader for Dorothy's future apotheosis. The mythic hero or heroine is frequently a person of mystery, and the very puzzlement as to the hero's origins prepares the reader for a later claim of divine or semi-divine parentage. Dorothy is described as an orphan, and no other facts about her past are given except that she came to Aunt Em from somewhere else.

Brian Attebery (Hearn 279-80) misses the mythic symbolism of this opening largely because he relies on the fairy tale structure outlined by Vladimir Propp in his Morphology of the Folk Tale. According to Propp, the fairy tale always begins with an idyllic situation followed by a profound loss and a subsequent act of rebellion or disobedience. Hence, in Oz, Attebery projects an implied beginning in which Dorothy is living happily with her natural parents, loses them, and is then swallowed up by the prairie twister after disobeying the injunction of Aunt Em to stay in the cyclone cellar. However, the text does not support the conjecture that Dorothy ever lived with her natural parents. In the text, Dorothy's origins are totally mysterious, and this mystery is quite appropriate because it prepares the reader for Dorothy's future development. Attebery's mistake is to construe the story purely on the fairy tale level and to ignore its mythic elements. The fairy tale hero(ine) is always an ordinary person, whereas the mythic hero or heroine is someone who stands apart. By attempting to reduce the mystery to something commonplace, Attebery destroys the coherence of the story. The logic of the opening passages in Oz is that those who are part and parcel of the ordinary world (Aunt Em and Uncle Henry) cannot transcend it without outside help. If Dorothy can rescue them as Toto has rescued her, it is because she is not wholly of the everyday world. This is consistent with her magic flight to Oz in order to discover her powers as well as the necessity of her return to rejuvenate her foster parents.

In Munchkin Land, Dorothy is immediately recognized as a great sorceress, and this incident prepares the reader for further revelations of a similar kind. Baum also emphasizes that Dorothy came to her (Aunt Em), as opposed to saying that Dorothy came to them. This emphasis not only focuses the story on the relationship between Dorothy and Aunt Em, but underscores the idea, reinforced later in the tale, that Dorothy comes as a “gift” to Aunt Em from some mysterious source. Ultimately, both Dorothy and Aunt Em experience crises. Dorothy's laughter awakens Aunt Em from the hypnotic spell of Kansas, but the transformation remains incomplete. Meanwhile, Toto saves Dorothy from the danger of falling under the very spell that has transformed Aunt Em from a pretty young wife to a grim reflection of her surroundings. (The name “Toto” is symbolically appropriate, of course, since it implies that he is everything, the catalyst that determines the destinies of all.)

IN THE BELLY OF THE CYCLONE

Dorothy's mythic adventure begins with a magic flight inside a tornado. The psychic need for the life-renewing voyage inside the cyclone can only be understood in reference to the gray, symbolically deficient world of Dorothy's Kansas. Like Jonah in the belly of the whale, Dorothy's transit to Oz is to a world of rebirth symbolized, not only by the whale image, but also by the ambience of the voyage itself. She is carried gently and peacefully—not bludgeoned into unconsciousness as in the movie, but rocked to sleep by the gentle swaying of the house. The journey continues in this way for many hours. At one point, Toto falls through the trap door that used to serve as the entrance to the storm cellar, but Dorothy manages to rescue him by grasping his ears and pulling him back through the door into the safety of her bed (9-10). For a moment Dorothy realizes that Aunt Em and Uncle Henry will think she is dead; but, after a few anxious moments, she is peaceful and serene. Her composure is such that she is even able to rescue Toto, whose passing in and out of the door is yet another image of rebirth. The ultimate sign of this transfiguration is that Dorothy is christened only after the tornado: Her name becomes Dorothy Gale.

The cyclone lands Dorothy, Toto, and the house “very gently—for a cyclone” in the land of Oz. It simultaneously crushes the Wicked Witch of the East, who represents the guardian of the threshold between the two worlds. The crossing of this first magical boundary automatically implies danger, just as the notions of trespass and violation do in ordinary life; therefore, the threshold guardian is a shadowy presence whom Dorothy must defeat or conciliate (Campbell 145-46). In Dorothy's case, the fateful killing of this first guardian by the falling house eliminates any need for conciliation. In classical myth such guardians bound the world in four directions and define as well as confine the hero in his present sphere. So in Oz there are four witches: the Good Witch of the North rules the red land of the Gilligans; the Wicked Witch of the East rules the blue land of the Munchkins; the Good Witch of the South rules the purple land of the Quadlings; and the Wicked Witch of the West rules the yellow land of the Winkies. The navel of this magical realm is the Emerald City itself, ruled by the Great Wizard.

Some critics regard the killing of the Witch of the East as a suggestion that Dorothy commits matricide: the old witch whom Dorothy kills symbolizes her mother.⁴ However, mythic symbolism suggests a broader meaning. In Greek myths the guardians of the threshold and the avenging forces of nature are often feminine (for example, the harpies, Medusa). But these forces do not simply represent death; they also represent renewal and rebirth. Mythic symbolism is largely taken from the cycles of nature: the killing of the Winter Witch is necessary for the coming of Spring; the death of the body is necessary for the resurrection of the soul. If we suppose that the meaning of the death of the Witch of the East is that Dorothy killed her mother—and, since Dorothy is only six or seven, that would imply, perhaps, that Dorothy's mother dies in childbirth—then that death must have been necessary for the attainment of a greater object. Given the spiritually impoverished lives of Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, the greater object in Dorothy's world of Kansas would be to redeem them with her love. That is, if the matricidal theme is an acceptable interpretation, the fuller meaning would be that Dorothy is a “gift” from the natural mother to the adoptive parents. However, the opening passages show that Aunt Em and Uncle Henry do not yet understand Dorothy's gift to them. They are too much under the spell of Kansas; hence the need for the magic flight to destroy the witch that has enchanted them. Just as Hansel and Gretel recover their parents by killing the witch in the Gingerbread House, breaking the spell of the stepmother, so Dorothy takes on the forces that have enslaved her step-parents—the wild, destructive forces of nature controlled by the Wicked Witch of the West.

INITIATION

After the departure of magic flight, the next stage of the mythic adventure, according to Campbell, is the initiation of the hero: “Once the hero has entered the mythic realm, he encounters strange though intimate forces who may threaten him or offer him supernatural aid. Typically it is an old crone (a fairy godmother) who initiates the hero into the new world, offers him charms and amulets against its dangers, and starts him in his adventures” (97).

The first person that Dorothy encounters in Oz is the Good Witch of the North—an elderly, maternal, kindly protectress. She bears a striking resemblance to Aunt Em: her skin is wrinkled, her hair is nearly white, and she walks stiffly. The Munchkins accompanying the North Witch, Dorothy notices, are “as old as Uncle Henry” (15).

The reference to Uncle Henry reinforces the impression that the Good Witch is the benign alter ego of Aunt Em. Since she appears immediately after the old East Witch has died and resembles the East Witch, it is possible that both witches represent Aunt Em's double aspect: as both nuturing and destroying. Also, the North Witch walks “stiffly,” as if the killing of the East Witch has affected her, as if in fact she is dying too. Interestingly, she never appears in the story again or in any of the sequels. If the witches do represent Aunt Em, there may be a hidden Freudian pun in the death of the East Witch: the house(work) is killing Em. Later in the story Dorothy is made to do housework in the castle of the Wicked Witch of the West and to share (temporarily) Aunt Em's dreary existence.

The Wicked Witch of the East was also very old, the North Witch explains; advanced age made her legs dry up quickly, leaving only the silver shoes behind as a legacy. The silver slippers are like Gygel's ring in Plato's Republic or the ring of power and invisibility in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. They are the legacy of evil, yet their proper use (or rather avoidance) can bring ultimate good. Like the hair of the Good Witch and Aunt Em, they are silver, and hence represent projected destinies with which Dorothy must cope. They suggest death and the necessity that Dorothy must be freed from them—as she ultimately is, during her return to Kansas, dropping the slippers into the Deadly Desert which surrounds Oz.

In Oz white is the color of sorcery and witchcraft, hence the color of the magic shoes. Because Dorothy is wearing her blue-and-white checked dress, she is immediately taken for a good witch devoted to the protection of the Munchkins, since blue is the color of the Munchkins and white of the witches. Thus the Munchkins are unafraid of Dorothy and offer her assistance whenever she encounters them. It is clear from the incidents which follow in the story that the Munchkins are right in thinking that Dorothy is a good witch or sorceress; they give the first intimations of her “true” origins: her semi-divine nature or parentage. From this point on, Dorothy will travel through Oz armed with magic, soon to be accompanied by magical attendants.

While some critics, such as Osmond Beckwith, argue that the East and/or North witches are symbolic representations of Dorothy's missing, and, hence, mysterious mother, this does not seem a likely interpretation (239-41). They are too old; the North Witch is maternal, but more like a fairy godmother than a mother. Moreover, the imputation of a natural mother runs counter to Dorothy's apotheosis as a semi-divine being. Aunt Em seems a more likely model for the East and North witches, though there certainly seems to be an indirect reference to the mother in the cyclone/killing sequence.

Dorothy's quest begins when she expresses the wish to go home to Kansas, thinking that Aunt Em and Uncle Henry must be worrying about her. Getting home will be difficult, the witch explains, since Oz is cut off from the rest of the world by a deadly, impassable desert that surrounds it. The North Witch divines that Dorothy must go to Oz and seek the assistance of the powerful Wizard. It appears she must travel alone, since each witch is confined to her own corner of Oz, but the North Witch gives her a protective magical kiss to safeguard her travels. The kiss becomes a visible halo on Dorothy's forehead and acts as an amulet against all evil.

Before Dorothy's departure the Good Witch of the North explains why witches and sorcerers are so prevalent in Oz; Oz is uncivilized. In civilized places, like Kansas, the sorcerers and witches are long dead; hence, there is no longer any magic there. (Before Dorothy's arrival in Oz, there were four witches: two good and two bad. Once the East Witch has been killed, only one wicked witch remains: the Witch of the West.) The fact that Oz is uncivilized is important, for it prepares the reader for the amoral actions of Oz's inhabitants. It puts aside the moral censorship of conscience in the events to follow: the Wizard's murderous schemes, the cruelty of the Wicked Witch, the attacks of nightmarish creatures, and further killing by Dorothy herself. On this new plane, the meaning of events transcends conventional, civilized understanding. The only assurance is that Dorothy will be protected throughout her adventures by a benign presence symbolized by the magic kiss.⁵

If Dorothy cannot be harmed by the Wicked Witch, what is her encounter with the Witch all about? Mythically, it is the slaying of the forces of darkness as a prelude to transfiguration. The question is not whether the Wicked Witch can slay Dorothy, but whether Dorothy can slay the witch. In the movie the witch is made Dorothy's one and only antagonist; in the book Dorothy must overcome many obstacles, and the witch is only one, although the greatest, opponent. In Baum's story it is not the witch who seeks out Dorothy; rather, Dorothy seeks out the witch, even though the witch has never harmed her. Baum's plot turns on how the killing will be justified, how Dorothy's innocence will be maintained. Mythically, Dorothy's innocence is preserved because her act goes “beyond good and evil.” She is dealing with cosmic forces, not individual egos. Moreover, the forces are essentially immortal. What she kills is a symbol, not a human being.

Psychoanalytic interpretations of these opening passages miss much of the nature and magical symbolism of these events. The old Witch of the East dries up in the sun, like the Kansas prairies, with which she is somehow connected to Dorothy's past. The power and status of the East Witch passes to Dorothy with her possession of the silver shoes, which she puts on after the Good Witch of the North has left. She wears them ostensibly to replace her worn-out shoes from Kansas, and in ignorance of their great power. Finally, the last act of the Good Witch of the North is to point out the direction of Oz via the Yellow Brick Road. Yellow is the color of the Winkie country which lies beyond Oz so—though the witch does not mention it—the way to Oz is also the path to the Wicked Witch. In the sequels Dorothy becomes the bridge by which one gets to Oz; she becomes the new guardian of the magic threshold.

At the end of the story the last witch Dorothy encounters is Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, who is said to be very old but looks the same age as Dorothy. Glinda seems an amalgam of Dorothy and the North Witch, the old witch rejuvenated by Dorothy's power and with her magic and fertility restored. When Dorothy returns to Kansas, taking her own life-renewing mana, she has already received the powers of two witches and much more.

THE ROAD OF TRIALS

In Campbell's monomyth the trials begin when, “once beyond the threshold, the hero of the mythic cycle encounters not only threatening forces but supernatural helpers overtly or secretly sent by the patron god or goddess” (146-47). Dorothy receives further supernatural aid and protection from three future kings of Oz: the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion. In addition, their destinies become inexplicably bound up with her own.

Nothing in the Baum books has aroused as much controversy as these non-human and semi-human characterizations. The major controversy is a moral one, namely, whether these characterizations represent healthy role-models for the child reader. Some regard Baum's inventions as sterile, castrated, semi-masculine figures, revealing the author's own psycho-sexual abnormalities. This seems an interesting, but simple view, for even if figures like the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and the other Ozian “automata” reveal something about Baum himself, that does not necessarily imply they carry these meanings in the story itself.

Rather, the subplots concerning these characters develop the major mythic themes of the work. The Scarecrow resembles nothing so much as the dying and resurrected Corn God. Though he was born yesterday (the day Dorothy was reborn in the cyclone), he is immortal. As guardian of the fields he is a symbol of fertility, not infertility. He gains his throne, but not before he is torn to bits by the Winged Monkeys and then resurrected by Dorothy. As Dorothy is a symbol of fertility, he is her symbolic consort—the Osiris to her Isis. Like Dorothy he seeks wisdom to restore the fallen world, symbolized by his inability to guard the grain from his nemesis, the Killer Crows who attack by command of the Wicked Witch of the West. His desire for a brain is, as the Wizard points out later, a desire for experience (101). He has intelligence, but he wishes to gain wisdom. His destiny is to win the throne of Oz itself, but not before confronting the images of death and destruction symbolized by the crows and the Witch of the West.

The Tin Man is a much more mystical and enigmatic figure than the Scarecrow. Like him, he is immortal; but while the Scarecrow is a thing magically transformed into a person, the Tin Woodman is a person all but transformed into a thing. An ordinary man, working as a woodcutter, he fell in love with a Munchkin girl and desired to marry her; but, under an evil spell cast by the East Witch, he chopped himself to pieces with his own axe. Undaunted, he had the parts of his body replaced by a master tinsmith until, finally, he was all tin; but with the removal of his heart, he lost all love for the girl, and, hence, had to acknowledge temporary defeat. His rescue by Dorothy and the Scarecrow, however, gives him new hope that his love can be restored (33-34). Like the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman can be associated with death, but in a more positive way than Beckwith suggests when he refers to him as the ineffectual “chopper who chops off your head.”

The Tin Man, as a result of his mutilation, is pure spirit. He complains that he has lost his heart, but, in fact, his humanity is all that is left of the original man. He is literally a ghost in a machine, a spirit-power. As a woodcutter, he is a gardener who prunes away all that is dead to make way for new life; hence, he is an image of fertility. As a spiritual being, he has pruned himself, cutting away everything inessential to his own persona. Consumed completely by love and sympathy, he wants, he says, to feel all that is to be felt, whether of joy or sorrow. He weeps when he accidentally steps on a beetle, but he kills when confronted by the hatred of the West Witch. Since Dorothy is a goddess of love, he is her perfect protector against all evil intent. Like the Scarecrow, he is ultimately slain only to reach an even higher plane of being. His destiny is to rule the kingdom of the Wicked Witch herself, and there to remain guardian against the forces of darkness and evil.

The Cowardly Lion is also a symbol of latent and overt power. Unlike the other companions, he is already a king, since his very roar has been enough to frighten all the other animals into submission. Though the symbol of courage, he says he wants to learn real courage: to know real fear and overcome it. That test would provide the occasion for the unleashing of his great strength, which at the moment is quite useless to him, since all creatures bow to him without a fight. Symbolically he must lose his throne in order to regain it, to give meaning to the symbol he represents. More simply put, to test and know his courage, he needs an opponent. At the same time, he is frightened because he does not know what form the challenger will assume, and so he fears everything, even the most insignificant insect. For the moment, he has forsworn any use of force in his own interest; hence, all his power is available to Dorothy. Later, when his challenger appears, a giant spider, he defeats him and regains the throne he deliberately left vacant. He wins the battle because he has found something in his adventures with Dorothy more important than fear itself: love and devotion. When the animals come to him for protection, he can transfer his devotion to them and, on their behalf, find the courage to slay the monster and win his throne.

Beckwith's argument that the companions of Dorothy are impotent and castrated figures ignores their functions in the story. His reaction is largely to the images of mutilation and defeat which the companions suffer, but this is to ignore the themes they represent and how these serve to support Dorothy's quest. The companions' defeats and mutilations are all redeemed before the story ends. Interestingly, Beckwith does not comment on the interpretation of the spider monster—which is a striking lapse, for a Freudian. One immediate conclusion is to see it as a negative female image. But how does it fit into the Lion's own story? The spider seems to be everything the Lion originally wanted to be: fearless, terrifying, capable of destroying every animal (except the lion) in its path. But the spider has no courage because it has no feelings. It is an indifferent power. The Lion cannot meet the spider monster on the field and defeat it in fair combat; his strength is no match for its strength, so he defeats it by cunning. His knightly ambition, to defeat a worthy adversary in open combat, is not realized—at least on one level. He does, however, find his courage in moral ascendancy over his enemy. On a Jungian level, the spider may represent the Lion's repressed alter ego, the repressed violence that is only restrained by his superego.

The three “kingly” companions are presented to Dorothy in forms which Dorothy and Baum's child-readers find nonthreatening, although their hidden aspects represent overwhelming powers—powers summoned perhaps by the silver shoes. The fact that they appear to Dorothy as automata, or toys, does not mitigate their status. Their apparent impotence is merely to reassure and befriend their charge. The toys of children are not just their playthings and playmates, but, like temple gargoyles, their protectors against all the terrors of the external world. Symbolically, the toys are harmless only to the children they protect. Accompanied by these protectors, Dorothy proceeds with confidence to the Emerald city. The trials encountered on the way, such as the attack of the Kalidahs or the deadly Poppy Field, all reveal the character and nature of her companions.

THE EMERALD CITY

The Emerald City represents the mythic “World Navel” of Oz: the source of all power and/or illusion, and the dispenser of both good and evil. As Campbell explains, only from the World Navel can the successful hero bring the life-renewing energy, whether an abundant harvest or a manifestation of grace (42-45). Hence, Emerald City is green, the color of life and also that of magic. However, since the World Navel is the source of all existence and issues in all the paradoxes of existence, the ruler of the World Navel is sometimes a trickster like the Wizard of Oz—“to God, all things are fair and good and right, while men hold some things wrong and some right.”⁶ The World Navel is, therefore, as much a seat of illusion as it is of reality: the reality of God appears as an illusion to man; opposites become like to each other. The World Navel, in short, is a fountain of impersonal cosmic forces and energies. For these reasons, the one who is responsible for dispensing the gifts (or curses) that emerge from the fountain may seem to the naive and uninitiated to be a trickster, especially since he does it even-handedly and impersonally. The World Navel, then, represents fate or chance.

All the paradoxes of the World Navel are reflected in the adventures of the Wizard. He is not of Oz, but a carnival illusionist from Omaha. While piloting his balloon during an exhibition, he was blown off course and landed in Oz. Like Dorothy, he was immediately taken to be a sorcerer, and, as a result, was declared ruler of Oz. (Actually, the original ruler of Oz was named “Oz” and the wizard was taken to be his reincarnation.) The Wizard kept the people busy by ordering them to build the Emerald City. In order to reinforce the people's belief that the city is really made of emeralds, he commands them to wear green spectacles whenever they are within its precincts. As it turns out, the Emerald City really is made of emeralds, precious stones being common in Oz, but the people feel no resentment about wearing the glasses because once they become accustomed to them, they prefer to wear them.

The Wizard has made himself a prisoner in the Emerald City, secluded from everyone, including his subjects, to avoid detection by the witches. Although the destruction of the East Witch has left only one potential adversary, when the Wizard hears of Dorothy's arrival in the Emerald City, he is shaken—especially since she comes armed both with magic and guardians. Ultimately he decides to grant her an audience with a view to redirecting her powers against his one potential adversary, the Wicked Witch of the West.

When Dorothy and her companions visit the Wizard to ask for their boons, each is permitted a separate audience with the Wizard and encounters a different image. Altogether there are four, which suggests that they are the threshold guardians of the Navel itself. The Scarecrow sees a winged fairy; the Tin Man sees a gigantic monster resembling a cross between a rhinoceros and elephant, with five arms, eyes, and legs; the Cowardly Lion sees a ball of fire; and Dorothy sees a giant, disembodied head. While the meaning of these images is unclear, they evoke interesting psychological associations.

The beast spied by the Tin Woodman appears as a creature from the id, primitive and sexual. Inasmuch as the Woodman has two bodies (one mortal, one immortal) and an axe, the five-limbed creature he sees may well be a repressed image of himself. He has transcended the flesh and reached an ethereal plane, yet the beast still represents an obstacle to him. Analogously, the five limbs and eyes may represent the five senses, and hence the fleshly experience which he lacks. The beautiful lady of the Scarecrow seems a fairy or sprite (Psyche?), perhaps a symbol of his goal (wisdom, spirituality), while the ball of fire (the sun) represents for the Lion the fiery courage which he wishes to acquire. The giant head which Dorothy sees is awesome, but not fierce. Beckwith contends that it is a father figure, a plausible idea, because it is disembodied and phallic and perhaps prefigures the Wizard's real impotence (241-42). However, according to Campbell, it is inevitable that the hero who is about to transform the world should encounter the symbol of authority (in patriarchal myths, the father) of that world (126-48). The hero's quest amounts to his supplanting that very authority. As with the threshold guardians, the father must be conciliated or defeated. He may demand that the contender show his worthiness by performing some wondrous or perilous act, or he may simply acknowledge the contender's status and abdicate. The interaction between the hero and the authority figure is complicated by the fact that the father/ruler possesses the power to transform himself, to create endless illusions to confuse the knight-errant.

Dorothy goes to the Wizard because he is identified as the supreme ruler of Oz. When she asks the Wizard to send her back to Kansas, the Wizard demands that she do something for him in return: kill the Wicked Witch of the West. His demand implies that he must abdicate if Dorothy succeeds in the quest, for he has no power to keep his promise; his impotence will be apparent to everyone. But if Dorothy fails, he will maintain his position and authority.

The complications of the sequences concerning the Wizard have to do with Baum's playfulness in exploiting the implications of the “World Navel”: what is real appears to be illusion; what is illusory appears to be real. The Wizard thinks that he is tricking Dorothy by sending her to the Wicked Witch; but the killing of the witch, ironically, permits Dorothy's return home. With the uncritical acceptance of a child, Dorothy believes the illusions the Wizard creates, and because she believes in them, she discovers the realities they represent. The self-deceits of the Wizard are a constant source of amusement in the story—for example, when Dorothy returns from her quest, he escapes from the Emerald City at the very moment he is safe.

Some critics deplore what they take to be the immortality of the Wizard. The Wizard, according to Beckwith, is a “horrible” man, a father figure who attempts to immolate his daughter: like the god Baal or Moloch, sacrificing children to placate the elements (241). However, this interpretation ignores the mythic theme that the Wizard represents impersonal forces. The cosmic hero is the one who ultimately identifies with the World Navel itself and thereby transcends ego-related notions of right and wrong. As with the mystic sage, the hero's self dissolves and becomes one with the cosmic process, a process that contains both good and evil, both Being and Becoming. As a symbol of fertility, Dorothy inevitably must journey to the opposite: the place of death and sterility. The two are, in fact, simply different aspects of the same thing.

THE WICKED WITCH OF THE WEST

In the Land of the Winkies, Dorothy and her friends encounter the threshold guardians of the Wicked Witch's domain and face the first real test of their powers. After Dorothy leaves the Emerald City, she discovers that her clothes, and even Toto's collar, have changed to white: the visit to the Emerald City has increased her magical powers, and the color change foreshadows her success. The land of the Wicked Witch is the only part of Oz that resembles Kansas: the land is treeless, hot, and deserted. There are no roads, because no one in Oz ever wanted to go there. The Witch's power rests on her control of otherwise wild and untamed natural forces: the Winged Monkeys, the Killer Wolves and Crows, and the Deadly Bees. Like the Wizard, she is a usurper of another's throne, but unlike him, she has real power. Her ultimate weapon is the golden cap that controls the Winged Monkeys. Whoever has the golden cap can command the monkeys three times, and only three. When Dorothy approaches, the witch has already used up two wishes: one to enslave the Winkies and one to drive the Great Oz (not the Wizard, but the ancient ruler of Oz) out of the land of the West. By implication, it is the absence of the Great Oz which has left the land barren and infertile.

The Winged Monkeys themselves are primordial inhabitants of Oz, dating back to the most ancient days of the wonderland. They are amoral, mischievous forces, like Pan and his satyrs. The golden cap studded with diamonds and rubies is the crown of their king. Because of a prank they once pulled in the land of the North, they were enslaved to the cap, which passed from one ruler to another. In time the cap fell into the hands of the Wicked Witch, who used its power to seize the land of the West.

The episode of the Wicked Witch repeats the theme of the World Navel. The ultimate powers are indifferent to human notions of good and evil. The balance of nature requires the release of opposing forces; the Winter Witch is as necessary to the ultimate good as the zephyrs of spring. By implication the enslavement of these forces upsets the balance and brings about the opposite: the apocalypse. The moral passions of the ancient rulers of Oz caused them to enslave the Winged Monkeys to bring about moral harmony. But once the monkeys were enslaved, their powers were no longer truly neutral, since they were bound to do the bidding of their owners. We are not told how the witch got the cap, but her possession of it upset the equilibrium. She overthrew the original rulers and enslaved the people at large.

The West Witch is limited in resources; she has only one wish left from the golden cap, and only the wild things (wolves, crows, and bees) to guard her kingdom. When Dorothy arrives at her border, the situation becomes even more desperate for her: the Tin Woodman decapitates the forty wolves with his axe, while the deadly bees kill themselves attacking his armor; meanwhile the Scarecrow wrings the necks of the forty crows, and the Lion frightens away the Winkie slaves with his terrifying roars. These calamities force the witch to use her final wish of the golden cap. Summoning the monkeys for the last time, she orders them to destroy Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Man, but to bring the lion to her so that she can enslave him and make him draw her carriage. With her real powers gone, she desires the symbols of those powers, just as Dorothy's companions seek the symbols of their virtues.

The Winged Monkeys proceed to do as they are told, but, seeing the protective kiss on Dorothy's forehead, they realize they cannot harm her. They take both Dorothy and the lion to the Witch's castle and bid the Witch farewell.

Seeing the silver shoes and magic amulet Dorothy wears, the witch realizes that Dorothy cannot be harmed and becomes frightened for herself. Noticing Dorothy's innocence and her ignorance of the power of the silver shoes, she decides to frighten Dorothy into submission, convincing her that she is helpless. The witch makes Dorothy do housework around the castle, thus reenacting the life of Aunt Em in Kansas—the young, pretty wife who turned gray from over-work. This is the prelude to the killing of the witch: the reminder of the original motivation that brought Dorothy to Oz. Simultaneously there is a Hansel-and-Gretel motif to reinforce the point. The witch puts the lion in a cage in order to starve him into submission; Dorothy plays Gretel by sneaking food out to the Lion. The Hansel-and-Gretel motif again plays on the theme of killing the surrogate parent to recover the original idyllic parent.

The witch's attempts to steal Dorothy's silver shoes are pathetic. She cannot enter Dorothy's room at night because she is afraid of the dark, a fear that prefigures her own death. At another point, when Toto bites the Wicked Witch on the leg, she does not bleed, since her blood had dried up years before (like that of the East Witch). Thus another image of death points to the means of killing the witch: the water (the wet) opposes the dry as the rains transform the parched land of Kansas into a fertile plain. When the witch finally manages to steal one of the shoes by tripping Dorothy and grabbing the shoe that falls off, Dorothy picks up a nearby bucket of water and dissolves her. The witch melts down to a brownish mass. Dorothy then empties the rest of the bucket over the remains of the witch and sweeps it all out the door. The symbolic meaning of this cleansing is obvious. The purification ritual is complete and Dorothy achieves a kind of poetic justice by literally sweeping away the one who condemned her to a life of housework. She then frees the lion and the Winkies, and in gratitude, the Winkies help Dorothy resurrect the Scarecrow and the Tin Man.

THE ATONEMENT OF THE WIZARD

When Dorothy returns to the Wizard, bringing the news of the witch's death, she discovers that he is a humbug. To make amends, he promises to take Dorothy back to Kansas by non-magical means, his balloon. He wants to escape, fearful that the people of Oz will, like Dorothy, discover what a humbug he is and take revenge. As in the cyclone sequence, when Dorothy pursues a runaway Toto and so fails to heed parental injunction, the Wizard floats off alone to parts unknown. The disappearance of the Wizard leaves the throne of Oz vacant and brings about a transition of power and authority. By unmasking the false wizard, Dorothy dethrones the usurper and, symbolically, gains the throne herself. She names the Scarecrow as regent, appropriately, given his relationship to her and the fertility he represents. Symbolically she becomes her own father and assumes the offices of the father-figure. What remains, to complete the mythic tale, is marriage with the goddess and the return home.

THE MEETING WITH THE GODDESS

The journey to the Good Witch of the South is essentially a triumphal march, a celebration and demonstration of newly discovered powers. The Cowardly Lion defeats his rival, a giant five-legged Spider, and is enthroned as King of the Beasts. The Tin Woodman cuts a path through the fighting trees. Dorothy and her friends tiptoe through the China country where people are made of porcelain. They are frustrated only at the final approach to the Good Witch's territory by the clever defenses of the Hammerheads—Jack-in-the-box creatures—who use their heads as battering rams to force the party back. Since they cannot pass the Hammerhead country, Dorothy uses a wish from the golden cap to summon the Winged Monkeys and have herself and her companions carried through the air over the heads of their adversaries to Glinda, the Good Witch.

Though she is supposed to be very old, Glinda looks like a beautiful young girl about Dorothy's age. She asks Dorothy for the golden cap, uses her three wishes to send Dorothy's companions back to their thrones, restores the cap to the king of the Winged Monkeys, and instructs Dorothy how to use the silver shoes to return home. By her actions Glinda even-handedly frees both the moral and amoral (mischievous) forces. She begins, in fact, the work of restoration of Oz to return it to what it was in the ancient days and sets in motion the next mythic cycle.

In the usual heroic myth, a marriage would be indicated here (a union of the hero with the King's daughter after his victory—Jason, for example. Baum's unusual twist avoids the romantic theme and keeps the relationship asexual—a “marriage” then is indicated by other means: Glinda is an amalgam of the Good Witch of the North and Dorothy herself, as if the elderly witch were reborn. At the same time, Glinda is Dorothy's alter ego.

RETURN

In the final part of the myth, the return, the hero may be blessed and returns under the protection of the powers that be, or unfriendly powers may pursue him. During her adventures Dorothy has conquered or conciliated all, and so returns without obstacle. The magic shoes, like Frodo's ring, are lost forever; they fall off in the Deadly Desert. Dorothy finds herself rolling over and over in the Kansas prairies, home at last. Immediately, she sees the transformation that has taken place. A new house replaces the one destroyed by the cyclone; Uncle Henry is milking the cows, Aunt Em is watering the cabbages. When Aunt Em sees Dorothy, she runs over to her, and taking Dorothy in her arms, smothers her with real kisses. The desert of Kansas is beginning to bloom once again.

The real magic of Oz lies in its “deep” structure and its psychic unity. If critics have sometimes failed to appreciate the story, it is because they have missed the classical allusions and associations embedded in it. Baum's genius lay in his playfulness and his ability to juxtapose themes so as to please the adult imagination as well as the child's. What critics sometimes suppose to be lack of unity is really Baum's three-dimensionality: his ability to take us into the world of imagination through the open-endedness and the inexhaustibility of his analogies and metaphors.

Notes

1. Henry Littlefield, for example, in his “The Wizard of Oz: A Parable on Populism,” The Wizard of Oz, ed. Michael Patrick Hearn, Critical Heritage Series (New York: Shocken, 1983) interprets the fable as an allegory on the campaign of William Jennings Bryant and the general populist movement of the 1880s. Osmond Beckwith's article, “The Oddness of Oz,” in the same anthology, approaches the story as a study in psychopathology, as does Sheldon Kopp in “The Wizard Behind the Couch” (Psychology Today March 1970: 70-73, 84). At least twenty essays and books approach Baum's tale from numerous perspectives. However, the approach taken in the present essay—an interpretation of the work in terms of classical mythology—has not been done, possibly because the popularity of the 1939 movie eclipsed that of the book and because the movie radically alters the theme of the original work and moves it from the realm of heroic myth to that of escapist fantasy.

2. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (New York: Princeton UP, 1973) 30; cited hereafter in the text by page.

3. L. Frank Baum, The Wizard of Oz (New York: Schocken, 1983) 8; cited hereafter in the text by page.

4. Osmond Beckwith, “The Oddness of Oz,” Hearn 239; cited hereafter in the text by page.

5. In the 1939 movie, scriptwriter Noel Langley decided to cut the scene with the Good Witch of the North and her magic kiss, asserting that it would kill the suspense about what was going to happen to Dorothy. If Dorothy were protected by the magic kiss, the Wicked Witch could not menace her. This change disrupts the developing mythic theme, which carries its own suspense. Aljean Harmetz, The Making of the Wizard of Oz (New York: Knopf, 1977).

6. Heraclitus, fragment 102, cited by Campbell.