Criticism Of The Wizard Of Oz

1579 Words4 Pages

Frank Baum set out to create a modern fairytale intentionally or unintentionally in the American image when he wrote The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He says his story “aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out.” But his antagonist characters and situations are not without their frightening qualities. But nonetheless he created an entertaining lasting American fairy tale. Baum in creating an American version of a fairy tale combined traditional elements such as witches, wizards, monsters, and talking animals with familiar things for children and adults of his time such as cornfields and scarecrows. He followed in Lewis Carroll’s footsteps, whose book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was the most popular children’s book at the time, in creating a fun children’s book full of pictures and a lack of obvious morals dragging it down. His use of anthropomorphic characters, another characteristic of fairy tales, helps to create a fantastical nature to his story. This allows for the reader to better distinguish between the Normative and Secondary worlds. The use of a talking scarecrow, something both adults and children are familiar with, adds both a sense of familiarity as well as a stepping stone to understanding …show more content…

In the span of time it took for the mice to come together to save the Lion, the Tin Man “[…] made a truck out of the limbs of trees, from which he chopped away all the leaves and branches. He fastened it together with wooden pegs and made the four wheels out of short pieces of a big tree trunk.” That would be hard for most people to do in a matter of hours and he did it in what seems like mere minutes. The Tin Man along with the rest of Dorothy’s companions are so extraordinary in their abilities that they verge on being heroes in the vein of classic fairy tale

Open Document