Let's Take A Closer Look

7 Hidden Meanings in The Wizard of Oz

A tornado sweeps away the Kansas home of Dorothy and her dog Toto. After being carried a very long way, the house lands heavily on the Wicked Witch of the East, killing her. This earned Dorothy the gratitude of the local residents. The Good Witch of the North gives Dorothy a pair of shoes (silver in the book but red in the film because a screenwriter said red shoes would show up better). The Good Witch tells her to follow the Yellow Brick Road to the far-away City of Emeralds, where she can ask the all-powerful Wizard of Oz to help her get back to Kansas.

Early in her journey, Dorothy encounters three characters. When they hear of her mission, they join her. A Scarecrow wants to ask the Wizard for a brain, a Tin Woodsman wants a heart, and a Cowardly Lion wants courage. When they finally meet Oz, he tells them he will grant no favors until the Wicked Witch of the West is killed. 

When the foursome (plus Toto) goes looking for the green-skinned Wicked Witch, they are captured by the fearsome Flying Monkeys. They escape when Dorothy throws a bucket of water on the witch, causing her to melt into a puddle of nothing. When they go back to the Wizard, he cures the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion by tricking them into believing in themselves. Toto knocks over the screen behind which Oz is hiding, revealing him to be a fake who cannot help any of them get back to where they want to be. Dorothy and friends go to the castle of the Good Witch of the South (Glinda the Good) and ask for help, which she cheerfully gives. 

Glinda the Good is more like a fairy godmother than a witch. She commands the Flying Monkeys to deliver the Scarecrow to the Emerald City, where he has been made the ruler. She has the Monkeys fly the Tin Woodman to the Country of the West, where he will rule over the Winkies. The Cowardly Lion wishes only to return the forest, where all the beasts there have made him king. Glinda commands the Flying Monkeys to carry the Lion to the forest. As for Dorothy, Glinda tells her the silver shoes have wonderful powers and all she has to do is click her heels together three times and say where she wishes to go. Dorothy clicks those silver shoes (red in the film) three times and says “Take me home to Aunt Em.” Instantly she’s whirling through the air, and suddenly she’s back in Kansas. In the film version, Dorothy awakens to realize it was all a dream.

Frank Baum wrote 14 Wizard of Oz books, all children’s fantasies

In his most popular Oz book, a cyclone sweeps up a young Kansas girl and her dog and deposits them in another world. The girl gets in some tough spots, but is helped by the new friends she’s made while in a strange land. She and her companions have many adventures and enjoy a storybook ending, the way Baum intended it. That doesn’t stop the many people who have insisted the story has deeper meanings. Here are seven common theories:

1. Some said Baum intended the The Wizard of Oz to be political satire

Historian Henry M. Littlefield found brief fame when wrote an essay about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He claimed the story was a “parable on Populism,” operating on two levels. The obvious was the childhood fantasy. The deeper level was symbolic of the financial and political times.

The Populists were a rising political force. They wanted the United States to move from the monetary Gold Standard to one based upon gold and silver. Littlefield said Dorothy’s shoes represented the free silver movement, the Yellow Brick Road stood for the Gold Standard, and the green of the Emerald City symbolized paper money.

• The Emerald City was Washington, DC, nothing more than an elaborate deception.
• The Wicked Witch of the East was a stand-in for the bankers and industrialists of New York.
• The Wicked Witch of the West was the power and influence of the railroad baron and oilmen of the West.
• The Wizard himself represented an impotent presidency that is inferior to the power of moneyed interests.
• The Scarecrow represented farmers, seen by the moneyed interests as ignorant and empty-headed rubes, no more than muddle-headed hicks from the sticks.
• The rusty Tin Man lost his limbs to workplace accidents, symbolizing how factory workers were abused and mistreated in unsafe sweatshops.
• The Cowardly Lion represented William Jennings Bryan, presidential candidate and advocate of replacing the gold standard with the gold and silver standard.

2. Some theologians claimed The Wizard of Oz was really about religion

They point to Dorothy’s song Somewhere Over The Rainbow as illustrative of the tale of Noah and the Ark. The Yellow Brick Road was meant to be the symbolic path to spiritual enlightenment, lined with sin and temptation and the Emerald City represented Jerusalem. When the Wicked Witch of the West was destroyed by water, that act symbolized Christian baptism. The Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, and Cowardly Lion represented the Three Magi.

3. Fundamentalists attacked The Wizard of Oz as ungodly because it was impossible for a witch to be good  

One story says a small group of fundamentalist Christians in Tennessee, home of the Scopes Monkey Trial, filed a lawsuit to get the book banned from public schools because they didn’t want their children to be seduced into “godless supernaturalism.” Disagreers said that if a book can cause people to abandon their faith, “They ain’t got much of a faith.“

Southern Baptists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson attempted to ban the film’s TV broadcast in 2004. Robertson said the Almighty told him personally that “flying monkeys and witches are an affront to all good Christians.”

4. Many asserted that the Wizard of Oz was a declaration of feminism

Ten years before he finished his book, Baum published political tracts written by his mother-in-law, writer Matilda Joslyn Gage. A staunch activist, Gage was a radical suffragette, an abolitionist, and a campaigner for Native American rights. Gage held that traditional fairytales always had the woman in peril waiting to be rescued by a bold and handsome man, maybe even a wealthy prince. 

When Baum’s book came out, women were not allowed to vote in the United States. Suffragettes argued that the first feminist role model was Dorothy because she defended herself by bravely standing up to threats and opposition on her own. Some said Dorothy reversed traditional gender roles by helping the inept male characters she met along the way.

5. Theosophists had their own interpretation of The Wizard of Oz

Baum’s activist mother-in-law was also a theosophist and Baum joined the Theosophical Society of Chicago in 1892.  As a group, theosophists followed the teachings of Russian mystic and spiritualist Helen Pretnova Blavatsky, co-founder in 1875 of the Theosophical Society. Theosophists considered themselves more philosophical than religious, although many of their beliefs were a combination of older European philosophies and Eastern religions.

The BBC says theosophists viewed the Yellow Brick Road as representing the Golden Path of Buddhism, down which the soul travels to enlightenment and illumination. The cyclone represents reincarnation, the cycle of physical births and deaths. The Wizard is the embodiment of charlatan ministers who keep the innocent Munchkins quiet by promising them immortality in the land of clouds and angels.

6. Some say The Wizard of Oz was a hallucinogenic drug trip

Trippers believe psychedelics played a big part in the creation of fantasy literature and film, citing Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Walt Disney’s Fantasia as prime examples. They point out such things as the Wicked Witch of the West putting a poppy field in the path taken by Dorothy and her friends. Poppies are the source of opium, of course, and the reason Dorothy fell into a deep sleep. And when Glinda, the good witch, sprinkles her with snow to awaken her, “snow” was a well-known slang term for heroin. Druggies say it’s no coincidence that the Tin Man, immune to heroin, has to wake up the others who are falling asleep. 

The Wizard of Oz is often used as an example of what might happen to your consciousness on acid, and add that when asked what taking LSD is like, tell the uninitiated to watch the film. Trippers believe that only someone who has experience with hallucinogens can grasp where many of Baum’s weird ideas came from, believing Baum wrote The Wizard of Oz while under the influence.

7. The Wizard of Oz is a blank wall up on which we project our own ideas

Rebecca Onion writes about culture, history, and ideas. In an American Experience Newsletter, she makes the case that the strength of the Wizard of Oz story “lies not in any specific interpretation of meaning, but rather as a blank canvas for so many kinds of American fantasies.” 

Historian Quentin Taylor said Dorothy is “each of us at our best – kind but self-respecting, guileless but levelheaded, wholesome but plucky.” She is independent, optimistic, and assertive, just like the United States itself, “a young nation that won its independence and believes in opportunity and a better future.”

Researchers say there is a reason why Dilbert is so widely read and The Office is so widely viewed

Who hasn’t endured Emerald City, Inc. meetings with The Marketing Wizard of Oz, the Tin Man of Engineering, the Cowardly Lions of Middle Management, the Straw Man of Executive Decision-Makers, the Flying Monkeys of IT, and the Wicked Witch of HR?

Wags like to say that research should be providing the fact base for The Yellow Brick Road to The Emerald City Instead it hands out maps of celebrities’ homes at the corner of Walk and Don’t Walk, churning out mountains of misinformation that gather dust on shelves if you’re lucky or send you ill-prepared but confidently towards the opportunity at Little Big Horn if you’re not.

Bonus

Apophenia is the tendency to see connections between unrelated things. When those connections are made after the fact, retrophenia is the term for seeing meanings that aren’t there, particularly when they are intended to further private interests. Look back at the way people interpreted The Wizard of Oz and see who benefitted from each.