Everyone will remember the story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; lovely Dorothy gets swept away by a terrible tornado, lands in a town full of little munchkins, marches down a yellow brick road and meets a scarecrow, a tin man, and lion, is almost killed by a wicked witch, then finally makes her way back to Kansas by clicking her hills three times saying, “I wish I were home”. But is that really the entire story? Shouldn’t there be more? Well, to answer that question, there is more to this story. It’s not just about a girl from Kansas getting swept away by a tornado to the wonderful Land of Oz. L. Frank Baum painted a beautiful picture of life and politics in America during the late 1800s. Being a political man himself, it was right and just for him to include this in this timeless classic. Each person in the novel represents someone or something during this time in American history. Each of the main characters and places will be discussed, Kansas, Dorothy, Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, the Companions, and the Wizard
Baum, himself, was a vastly interesting fellow. He grew up with a fascination of fairy tales, like most kids today. His father was a rich oilman, and did not like Baum’s interest in fairy tales, so he sent him to military school. This only made Baum worst, and they arranged to have him sent home due to his unstable health conditions. When he returned home, he found in writing and began to publish is own paper entitled The Rose Lawn Home Journal. Baum enjoyed it so much, that he began writing in several different newspapers and magazines. As he grew up, he became a political writer for the Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer newspaper in North Dakota. This is where Baum got the majority of his idea to write the Oz Series, since N...
... middle of paper ...
...008. Web. 24. March. 2014.
“The Events of The West: 1880-1890”. PBS. West Film Project and WETA Credits, 2001. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.
“The Free Silver Movement”. The Gold Standard Now. n.p. 2014. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.
Geer, John G., and Thomas R. Rochon. "William Jennings Bryan on the Yellow Brick Road." Journal of American Culture 16.4 (Winter 1993): 59-64. Literature Resource Center. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.
McGovern, Linda. “L Frank Baum – The Man Behind The Curtain”. Literary Traveler. n.p. 1999. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
Ritter, Gretchen. “Silver Slippers and a Golden Cap: L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Historical Memory in American Politics”. Journal of American Studies 31.2. (1997): 171-202. JSTRO. Web. 26 Mar. 2014.
Taylor, Quentin P. “Money and Politics in the Land of Oz”. Independent Review 9.3. (2005): 413. General OneFile. Web. 23 Mar. 2014.
The West is a very big part of American culture, and while the myth of the West is much more enticing than the reality of the west, it is no doubt a very big part of America. We’re constantly growing up playing games surrounded by the West such as cowboys and Indians and we’re watching movies that depict the cowboy to be a romanticized hero who constantly saves dames in saloons and rides off into the sunset. However, the characters of the West weren’t the only things that helped the development of America; many inventions were a part of the development of the West and helped it flourish into a thriving community. Barbed wire, the McCormick reaper and railroads—for example—were a large part of the development in the West—from helping to define claimed land boundaries, agricultural development and competition, and even growth of the West.
In 1939, Victor Fleming made a film version of L. Frank Baum’s novel “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” However, both the novel and the film focuses or touches on the same moral, it features the protagonist Dorothy who resides in Kansas the farm, along with her aunt Em and uncle Henry as well as her dog Toto. Both Baum’s novel and Fleming’s 1939 film adaptation the setting is in Kansas which is described as a small farm which Dorothy lives in which in Baum’s novel is picturized as gloomy, grey and dull. Throughout Fleming’s adaptation of Baum’s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” there are a number of differences which presents itself in a direct manner on screen as well as similarities. The variety of changes in the film’s adaptation tends to take away from the meaning of L. Frank Baum’s depiction in his novel to a certain level and extent.
After reading the chapter, the opening scene is vastly different from the movie! In the movie, Dorothy ran away from home and was caught in the cyclone while looking for her aunt and uncle, not standing there in the doorway watching as it formed. Neither did she simply lie down during the storm. A piece of the window, if I am recalling correctly, broke off and hit her in the head, causing her to fall down and witness flying animals, as well as family members, outside her window. The Land of Oz and Dorothy 's time there, is all real in the book, not just an elaborate dream caused from unconsciousness. According to Baum, Oz is just an undiscovered continent that is hidden and surrounded by a harsh desert. One major difference is the shoe color. The ruby red slippers were referred to as being silver in this original excerpt from the story. Also after consulting with parts of the movie, I saw no reference of the Tin Man’s story. I surely don’t remember the story of a limb
The narrative begins with Dorothy, who lives on a farm in a black and white setting presuming the absence of vitality and the insufficiency of a place that was in poverty at the time. However, when Dorothy is picked up by a twister and wakes up in the Land of Oz, she finds herself in a completely opposite environment full of life, beauty, and color filled with new found opportunities. On her quest to Emerald City, Dorothy is presented with a few characters who are The Tin Man, The Cowardly Lion, and The Scarecrow who all feel like they need something more to complete them and they all seek out the “all powerful” wizard to obtain the things they want. The items they yearn for were a brain, a heart, and courage. Three things that we learn to utilize with experiences we go through. The characters eventually realize that they have always had what they have been longing for after the many obstacles they came through on their journey. In the end, Dorothy says, “If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't
As history cascades through an hourglass, the changing, developmental hands of time are shrouded throughout American history. This ever-changing hourglass of time is reflected in the process of maturation undertaken by western America in the late nineteenth century. Change, as defined by Oxford’s Dictionary, is “To make or become different through alteration or modification.” The notion of change is essential when attempting to unwind the economic make-up of Kansas in the 1880’s and 1890’s. Popular culture often reveres the American cowboy, which has led him to become the predominate figure in America’s “westering” experience (Savage, p3). However, by 1880 the cowboy had become a mythical figure rather than a presence in western life. The era of the cowboy roaming the Great Plains had past and farmers now sought to become the culturally dominant figure and force in the American West. Unlike the cowboys, farmers were able to evolved, organizing and establishing the Populist Party. The farmers’ newly formed political organization provided them with a voice, which mandated western reform. Furthermore, the populist ideas spread quickly and dominated western thought in the 1880’s and 1890’s. The period of the 1880’s and 1890’s marked the end of the American cowboy and gave farmers a political stronghold that would forever impact the modernization of the West.
The West: From Lewis and Clark and Wounded Knee: The Turbulent Story of the Settling of Frontier America.
Baum was very close with his mother-in-law, who was an influential suffragist who had worked with woman such as Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Baum had also been the secretary of his local women’s suffrage club. Knowing this some would say that some feminism aspects had found its way into the story of The Wizard of Oz, the men in this story have no real power and are lacking some sort of aspects such as a heart, brain, courage. Though, the woman such as Dorothy and the witches have great power and are not lacking in any
...lf-confidence. The Scarecrow was the one who believed that he had no brain even with him coming up with brilliant and clever solutions to the many problems that they faced on their journey. The tin man believed that he didn’t have a heart, but cries when bad things are brought upon the creatures they come to encounter. The lion believed that he had no courage even though he was the one brave enough to continue the journey, he always stated how brave he was and pushed forward even when the others did not want to. A famous quote from Carl L. Bankston III of Salem Press stated that "These three characters embody the classical human virtues of intelligence, caring, and courage, but their self-doubts keep them from being reduced to mere symbols of these qualities” (). This is an important quote because it highlights the self-confidence that Baum explored in his story.
Scene: This scene in the film comes just after the house has been picked up in the twister. Dorothy's house has been lifted up into the sky and suddenly dropped back down to earth in the middle of the Land of Oz. In the scene itself, Dorothy leaves her home to see that she is "Not in Kansas anymore," and finds the new and amazing world of the munchkin city in front of her. She also meets Gwendela the good witch as her journey in Oz begins.
...s. The Scarecrow represents farmers, agricultural workers, ignorant of many city things but honest and able to understand things with a little education. The Tin Man, He represents the industrial worker whose heart has been torn out by the evils of factory work and industrialism. W.J. Bryan embodied the role of the cowardly lion. Bryan was a very loud and booming public speaker but was viewed as a coward because he did not support the Spanish-American war. OZ is the US. The emerald city is Washington D.C. filled with greenbacks and the wizard is the president. Dorothy and her “party” follow the yellow brick way, or gold standard, to find the wizard and fix her problem. When all along they way to fix her problem of how to get back home was to tap her ruby red shoes which were silver thus in the original book thus representing the Populists push for a silver standard.
Slayton, Robert A. Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith. New York: Free, 2001. Print.
Frank Baum had a specific purpose, some were used to set up the tone and setting for different parts of the novel such as the colors used to describe Kansas and Oz. Colors were also used to represent the different people in Oz, not everyone in Oz were alike and were different from the way they acted, lived or the characteristic which defined them. This use of color also helped to set up an underlying theme of corruption and greed represented by the journey and the group of travelers headed up by Dorothy, who when she reaches Oz is driven by self interest as opposed to later when she wants to make sure that everyone benefits from the death of the wicked witch. Finally colors where used as representation of ideas from representing joy, death, and danger, whenever a color was used to describe something it represented that character or setting tying together the underlying themes of greed, corruption and social
The development of the Western genre originally had its beginnings in biographies of frontiersmen and novels written about the western frontier in the late 1800’s based on myth and Manifest Destiny. When the film industry decided to turn its lenses onto the cowboy in 1903 with The Great Train Robbery there was a plethora of literature on the subject both in non-fiction and fiction. The Western also found roots in the ‘Wild West’ stage productions and rodeos of the time. Within the early areas of American literature and stage productions the legend and fear of the west being a savage untamed wilderness was set in the minds of the American people. The productions and rodeos added action and frivolity to the Western film genre.
In conclusion, the protagonist of The Wizard of Oz Dorothy Gale, is initially unsatisfied with her life on her Aunt and Uncle’s farm and dreams of a foreign land over the rainbow, where there are no worries or disasters. Although as the story progresses, Victor Fleming incorporates a wide range of
The Wizard of Oz is a fiction story written by L. Frank Baum. The story has two main settings. The first setting is, Dorothy’s home, the Kansas prairies. The prairies are described as dry and gray. The second setting is the land of Oz. Oz is opposed from Kansas, it is colorful, bright, and full of joy. The Wizard of Oz has a grate theme or message behind the story. The message is that we all have good qualities in us, but it is up to us to use them.