The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Signet Classics) - L. Frank Baum [5]
Dorothy certainly does not promise, as her film double does, that she will forgo all other adventures; it’s only Judy Garland’s character, not Baum’s, who swoons “if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard.” Baum’s Dorothy’s explanation is less hysterical and more prosaically convincing: “No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home” (pp. 32-33).
The film deposits Dorothy back not only in place but in time. Reverting to an Alice-like plot mechanism eschewed by Baum, the movie plops Dorothy back in her safe little bed as if nothing in the world has changed: “You just had a bad dream,” movie Auntie Em explains. When Dorothy protests, “But it wasn’t a dream. It was a place,” the child is summarily silenced with Em’s “Sometimes we dream lots of silly things....”
In Baum’s fiercer story, Dorothy’s marvelous experiences in Oz take place in real time. The world has gone its way without her—as the world will—without apology or sentimentality; when Dorothy is carried back to Kansas, the first thing she sees is “the new farm-house Uncle Henry built after the cyclone had carried away the old one” (p. 217).
Time and place both exist in Baum’s novel, as do cause and effect. Dorothy is trying to make her way into—and out of—the absurd world of Oz. She is surrounded by creatures both powerful and feeble (such as her three companions, who are powerful and feeble simultaneously). Like Dorothy, they will eventually help to expose the system as absurd and reveal that power itself is nothing but “humbug.”
Doubts concerning the character of the Wizard himself begin on page 17, when Dorothy asks the Good Witch of the North whether the Wizard is “a good man.” The Witch replies, “He is a good Wizard. Whether he is a man or not, I cannot tell, for I have never seen him.” When Dorothy discovers that the Wizard cannot make good on his promises, even after “sending them to undergo hardships and slavery” (p. 151) Dorothy declares, “ ‘I think you are a very bad man.’ ... ‘Oh, no, my dear, I’m really a very good man; but I’m a very bad Wizard, I must admit’ ” (p. 159).
The role of the Wizard is separate from the man; his power is based on arcane rituals that exist to only mystify, not to perform miracles; miracles are sleights of hand and tricks of light.
“I’m just a common man,” the Wizard attempts, finally, to explain. But the Wizard is interrupted by the Scarecrow, who argues that he is far less or, at least, far worse: “You are a humbug,” says the Scarecrow in a grieved tone, to which the Wizard replies, “I have fooled everyone so long that I thought I should never be found out. It was a great mistake my ever letting you into the Throne Room. Usually I will not see even my subjects, and so they believe I am something terrible’ ” (pp. 154-56).
Any magic wielded by the Wizard is derived from the fact that he permits others to believe he has extraordinary powers. Even after Dorothy and her companions understand that the Wizard is merely a humbug, they persist in wanting him to grant their wishes. “Magically” he manages to do that for everyone—except for Dorothy: “Oz, left to himself, smiled to think of his success in giving the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman and the Lion exactly what they wanted, ‘How can I help being a humbug,’ he said, ‘when all these people make me do things that everybody knows can’t be done? It was easy to make the Scarecrow and the Lion and the Woodman happy, because they imagined I could do anything. But it will take more than an imagination to carry Dorothy back to Kansas, and I’m sure I don’t know