Exploring The Wizard of Oz

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During the 19th and 20th century, America became a massive super power of cultural abundance and productivity. As William Leach states in his work The Land of Desire and the Culture of Consumer Capitalism, “the cardinal features of this culture were acquisition and consumption as the means of achieving happiness; the cult of the new; the democratization of desire; and money value as the predominant measure of all value in society” (Leach page 3). With the rise of consumption, Americans would begin to spend their few open hours entering dream worlds of fantasy and enchantment to suppress the bland monotonous confines and shackles of the new modern society. One work of unimaginable enticement that catapulted Americans deep into the realm of imagination and wonder was the Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The Wizard of Oz appears to be a magnificent tale about the quest for one’s identity and purpose in a world of ideological liberation and self-expression. However, if one unveils the ubiquitous layer of fantasy ornamented in the story, the mechanisms of capitalism reveal themselves. Furth...

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