Let’s begin with the first Oz book L. Frank Baum ever wrote: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, published in 1900. There will be a lot to say for this one, so I’ll split it into several parts.
# The world of Oz is supposed to be one of a “modern American fairytale”. Baum’s ambition was to offer American children “local” fairytales and a literary world unique to the New World, rivaling with the old fairy tales of Europe. This is why the world of Oz reuses so many tropes and ideas from typical fairy tales (witches and wizards, magical objects and beings, talking animals…) yet updates them, reinvents them and twists them to make the tale differ from the traditions of the Old World – for example, take the idea of a “good witch”. This was something never done before, or at least without as much media coverage. Up until now, witches had always been depicted in children literature as wicked and evil beings, and Baum’s decision to present a good and benevolent witch was revolutionary (that is why Dorothy is so shocked upon hearing that there are good witches in Oz).
# Oz is a land of colors and a land of life. In this book, there is a clear visual opposition between the Kansas, the “civilized world”, and the one of Oz. Oz is like a lost Eden Garden, filled with greenery and animals, vibrant with colors and life and sounds, while Kansas is a world utterly grey and gray, all the colors washed off or bleached, a place of harshness, dust and old age. Just compare this description of Kansas:
“When Dorothy stood in the doorway and looked around, she could see nothing but the great gray prairie on every side. Not a tree nor a house broke the broad sweep of flat country that reached to the edge of the sky in all directions. The sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. Even the grass was not green, for the sun had burned the tops of the long blades until they were the same gray color to be seen everywhere. Once the house had been painted, but the sun blistered the paint and the rains washed it away, and now the house was as dull and gray as everything else.”
With the one of the place Dorothy’s house lands in: “Midst of a country of marvelous beauty. Lovely patches of greensward all about, with stately trees bearing rich and luscious fruits. Banks of gorgeous flowers on every hand, and birds with rare and brilliant plumage. A small brook, running and sparkling.”
# But where the hell is Oz? The location of Oz has been a big debate for years now. And in fact the first book seems to imply that Oz is located somewhere in the United-States!
You see, the tornado that carries away Dorothy (and not a cyclone. Baum made a mistake by calling it a cyclone when it is a tornado) isn’t some magical portal to another dimension here – it is merely a real tornado, that physically made Dorothy’s house change place. And given that a tornado can’t go far, it is highly possible that Oz is on the North American continent, maybe even inside the United-States! It seems reinforced by the fact that the Wizard of Oz actually came from Nebraska and was too carried away by winds to Oz…
Outside of that we know that Oz is cut from the rest of the world by a great desert that surrounds it – there are no mentions of magically deadly sands or things like that, though. In the first book, the desert is merely considered too big and too wide to be crossed. We also know that this isolation allowed Oz to not be “civilized” – the Witch of the North explains that they could keep their magic and their wizards and witches due to Oz being an “uncivilized” country, while civilized countries saw all their magic practitioners disappear. The exact meaning of “civilized” is quite unknown, and still up to debate – it probably means the advance of science and technology in this precise case. A very interesting fact to note is that the Witch of the North mentions that the land of Oz was “cut off” from the rest of the world a long time ago – which implies strongly that Oz was, a long time ago, connected to the rest of the world, and that the desert wasn’t always there. At least we know that it was cut off a long time before Kansas was even made – a theory one could make would be that the land of Oz was always there in the center of the North American continent and that it was isolated when the colonization happened, which could have been the bringing of “civilization” but this is just a wacky theory I’m making.
# The Munchkins aren’t the only small people in Oz. At least, in this book. As you will see, many peoples are described as small – the Munchkins, the Witch of the North, the Guardian of the Gates, the Quadlings… Or rather, they are described the same size as Dorothy, who is a “very well grown child for her age” (even though her age isn’t specified… in the first books she seems to be around eleven or twelve years old, but in later books she is rather between fourteen and sixteen). This is a very important point to understand this first book – when Oz was conceived in Baum’s mind, it was created as a world the size of a child. Everyone is the size of Dorothy, everything happens at her level, and thus the threat is less scary and she can be treated as an adult. This idea was reinforced by the original illustrations that represented ALL of the characters as roughly the size of Dorothy, from the Wicked Witch to Glinda. However, in the later books, Baum obviously had to abandon this idea since Dorothy wasn’t the only protagonist anymore, Dorothy ended up growing up, and he also needed a bit more diversity in his cast (he couldn’t just have small people everywhere all the time).
# Oz is not an unified country. When a character uses the term “Land of Oz”, it usually refers to the entirety of the lands inside the great desert. But this Land of Oz is made up of five different regions, each associated with a specific geographical point, a specific color and a specific population. In the East live the Munchkins whose color is blue, in the West live the Winkies whose color is yellow, in the South live the Quadlings whose color is red. In the first book, the North is actually left undescribed – we would only discover later that the North is the land of the Gillikins, whose color is purple. And at the center of Oz there are the lands surrounding the City of Emeralds, whose population doesn’t have a particular name, but is of course associated with the color green.
A very interesting fact must be pointed out: this central region has quite an ambiguous position. We know in this book that the Emerald City, which is basically the fifth region itself, was built for the Wizard of Oz, while the other four regions existed long before that. As a result, it may explain why this region is quite different from the others – it has its own specific color but its inhabitants don’t have any specific name like the Munchkins or the Winkies, and are merely Ozians. Now the question is: did a green region exist before the Wizard came or was the green region created around the City of Emeralds? But I’m afraid we won’t get the answer.
On a similar note, the different regions, while all part of the greater whole that is the Land of Oz, are still treated as independent areas, as their own lands and countries. Each has their own ruler, their own population, their own names. And there is no idea here that a region rules over the others – in later books the Land of Oz became a kingdom, dominated by an Ozian King living in the Emerald City, but in this first book the Emerald City isn’t the capital of Oz, and isn’t ruling over all Oz. The Wizard is specifically said to only rule over his City, and each country has its own ruler and keeps to itself. To cut it short, Oz seems to be much more a confederation of states than a federation or a feudal system like it would become later.
# And just like there are four main regions in Oz, there are four Witches too – at least, by the time Dorothy arrives. Each Witch corresponds to one of the four regions/cardinal point (in fact the television series Emerald City referred to them fittingly as the Cardinal Witches): one in the North, one in the South, one in the East and one in the West. These Witches are divided into two categories: the Good Witches (represented by the one in the North and the one in the South), and Wicked Witches (represented by those in the East and in the West). Forget already about this idea that “only wicked witches are ugly”, that was put in for the movie – and the movie also mixed up the two good Witches, of the North and South, into one, which created some plot holes.
But what exactly is a Witch? Now, this is a good question… the word Witch is always put with a capital in the book, just like the terms of any important character (the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Guardian of the Gates) but also just like any word used to refer to the Ozian population (a Munchkin, a Winkie…). We also know that the Witches have a specific color associated to them – white. This was why Dorothy was mistaken for a Witch, because she was wearing white. (And yes, it also means that the Wicked Witches wear white in the book, that was another idea Baum used to “upgrade” the idea of witches). All of these indications clearly show that they are different from normal Ozians, either a simple different social group at the same level as the Munchkins and Quadlings, either an entirely different species. One thing is sure: the Witches are HIGHLY respected in Oz, or at least very high in terms of social position. Of the four Witches we meet, three are rulers of their own countries (East, West and Glinda). While the Witch of the North is not mentionned to rule over the North (she just calls it her "home"), the Munchkins still bow down lowly to her when she leaves. And when the Munchkins believe Dorothy to be a Witch, they are too afraid to even go near her, and it is the Good Witch that has to take the first step.
A personal note I want to make is about the choice of the term “wicked”. It was probably for the alliteration, but wicked has quite a connotation you know? It isn’t like calling someone “evil”. Someone who is evil is bad passively, by nature, by essence. But “wickedness” is an active form of badness, one done in action. A wicked person will dedicate themselves to cause harm and disasters and to make people suffer, it is similar to the world maleficent (“that does evil”) and malevolent (“that wants evil”). Such an analysis allows a lot of theories to arise… is a witch good by nature and chooses to become wicked? Or is a witch neutral but then has to choose between good and wicked? It should also be noted that in Baum’s books, the Witches actually can’t go back to being good once they are classified Wicked. Indeed, while other Ozian villains reformed, sometimes after having their memory wiped out, the Wicked Witches always stayed bad and evil, always. So maybe they are indeed evil at core? Or maybe once a witch choses to be wicked she can’t go back? Again, there is a lot of theories possible, ESPECIALLY since the Witches lack any kind of backstory.
We don’t know where they come from, we don’t know if they were always witches, we don’t know if they have family, none of that. (Because yes, in the original books, the Witches are all unrelated to each other, there are no “avenge my sister” plot).
Another point I would like to make: in the book, the term “Sorceress” is used apparently as a synonym for the word “Witch”. Indeed, the Witch of the North welcomes Dorothy as “great Sorceress” (see the cap), Boq mentions that Dorothy must be a “great sorceress” (without cap) since she is wearing white and has the silver shoes, and in later books Glinda prefers to be called a “Sorceress”, with cap, than a Witch. It seems in general that Sorceress is a more… “neutral” and more “polite” term for Witch, with less connotations, or used when one ignores if a Witch is bad or good. Some theories going around think that “sorceress” is a term used to designate those that practice magic because they learned of it, studied it and acquired magical powers, while “witch” refers to beings able to do magic due to natural abilities, due to their fundamentally magic nature. It could be right – after all, Gayelette is referred to as a sorceress without being called a “Witch” (at least if my memory serves me right, I’ll have to recheck that). However, there is also the difficult part of The Witch of the North’s backstory. When she talks about the civilization, she mentions that before it the world had “witches, wizards, sorceresses and magicians”, and that by staying uncivilized Oz could keep its “witches and wizard” – no mention of sorceresses or magicians. She speaks of them as if they were separate categories, the witches paired with the wizards and the sorceresses with the magicians. Maybe sorceress is an alternate word for witch, and magician for wizard, but their clear separation seems to insist on a difference… again, the theory of “study VS nature” may be applied here. It is possible that witches and wizards are the male and female beings naturally able to do magic, while sorceress and magician refer to those that learned and studied the art of magic. To be honest this whole classification isn’t clear in the first book, more elements from later books should help us see better in this matter – but right now all one needs to know is that Oz has Witches and Wizards.
# Let’s talk a bit about the first Ozian region that Dorothy travels through: the land of the East, the Blue Land, the land of the Munchkins. This region’s “official” color is blue – well, official is maybe too much of a term. In the book it is merely referred to as the “favorite” color of the land’s inhabitants, like all the other “official” colors of Oz. However it doesn’t mean the whole land is blue – the flowers, the grass, the birds are said to be a diverse and vibrant palette of colors. Blue is rather found in man-made things: the Munchkins houses, farms, fences and doors are painted blue. The Munchkins also dye blue their bedsheets, their rugs and their clothes. In terms of clothes, we know that women and children wear blue but we don’t know exactly what they wear. However we have an exact description of the typical clothing worn by all the adult male Munchkins (and it seems that being an adult in the Munchkin population is being old enough to sport a beard) : a blue round hat that rises to a small point a foot above their heads, with little bells around the brims that tinkle sweetly as they move, blue clothes the same shade as the hats, and well-polished boots with a deep roll of blue at the top.
In terms of culture, we know that the Munchkins are by nature kind-hearted people, very emotional and very empathic – for example, when Dorothy starts crying, immediately the three grown-up Munchkin men around her also start crying.
The narration adds says that the Munchkins are good farmers able to raise large crops – in fact, all the Munchkins houses we see are also farms of some sort, and most of the Munchkins are farmers, the only exception mentioned being a tinsmith and a family of woodchoppers. A typical Munchkin house is round, with a big dome for a roof, all painted blue.
# The Munchkin country is “sometimes pleasant, sometimes dark and terrible”, as the Witch of the North puts it. Boq has a very similar warning: “the country is rich and pleasant, but to go to the Emerald City, one has to go through rough and dangerous places”. Indeed the Munchkin Country seems to be split in two areas – its most eastern area, which is a true Eden Garden, a rural Arcadia – and its western part, the closer to the Emerald City, that is basically one gloomy and creepy forest filled with dangers and monsters. Is it the natural disposition of the region? Or was it a natural tool the Wicked Witch used to isolate even more the Munchkins? Or maybe the whole country was peaceful and beautiful a long time ago but the Wicked Witch of the East made its border a world of doom and death? Who knows, all theories are possible.
To explore the Munchkin country, I will probably follow the Yellow Brick Road, the one that crosses the whole land. Note that in the book the Yellow Brick Road isn’t a sort of “historical landmark” or “main axis” in the Munchkin country. It is merely the only road that leads to the Emerald City, and in fact it isn’t cared for by anyone anymore, falling into ruin in the most isolated parts of the country. Most of the Munchkins never want to go to the Emerald City – Boq for example never went there, and the Tin Woodman explains that his father went once to the city, when he was a small boy, and that it already was “a long journey through a dangerous country”. (Take in note how there is a separation between the “dangerous country” and the one the Munchkins live in; I will talk about it later with the Quadling country). As for why the bricks are yellow, it is not explained in the book, even though a theory explains that the road is yellow merely because it goes towards the west, hence the yellow color (and it suggests that there are similar roads, a purple one for the north and a red one for the south).
The road starts in the best part of the country, with “neat fences of dainty blue color”, fields of grain and vegetable in abundance – it is also where is located the house of Boq. For those of you that don’t know of him, Boq is apparently “one of the richest Munchkins in the land”, his house being larger than a regular Munchkin house, and after the death of the Wicked Witch he hosts a party with a bunch of friends where they abandon themselves to the typical Munchkin pleasures – dancing, singing, playing the fiddle and eating feasts of fruits, nuts, pies and cakes. After this house follows the cornfield where the Scarecrow is first met. After that the road becomes rough, the yellow bricks said to be uneven, broken or missing. The farms are “not well-cared of”, there are fewer houses and fewer fruit trees, the country becomes “more dismal and lonesome”, until there are no more fences, and the land becomes rough and untilled. Clearly, the Munchkins avoid being too close to the western part of their country, or had to move away from it.
The road then enters into a forest – which seems to occupy the whole western part of the Munchkin country. The forest is said to be “great”, with trees “so big and so close” that their branches meet and unite, blocking the light of the sun, so that at night the forest is pitch-black and no human can even see what is going on around them. This is where the Tin Man’s house is located. The presence of the Tin Man is actually quite an interesting thing… you see the Tin Man is the only “human” inhabitant of this forest, and his cottage is the only house found in the forest. Since the Tin Man lived there (and then stayed rusted there) for a very long time, it is very possible that he lived in the woods at a time when the forest was still occupied by Munchkins lumberjacks and woodsmen, but that they ended up abandoning it, leaving only one wood chopper behind, the Tin Man. But again, the Tin Man’s cottage is quite close to the edge of the forest, so maybe even at the time when lumberjacks worked in it, they did not dare go into its depths. Further away, the trees and branches become so thick that if they aren’t chopped down, one can’t keep walking on the yellow brick road, clearly indicating that the road was abandoned and that nature grew wild around it. The road goes on in these “thick woods”, its yellow bricks covered with “dried branches and dead leaves”, with no birds around (because as the narration puts it, birds prefer open spaces and sunshine), but with deep growls in its depths, the growls of wild animals – in fact, it is in this part of the forest that we meet the Cowardly Lion.
Then the road is split, yes, split, by a wide and deep ditch that divides the forest “as far as can see”, with jagged rocks at the bottom and sides too steep to climb – the Lion has to take his comrades on his back and jump over it to continue along the Yellow Brick Road. Later, our little team meets another gulf that breaks the road, but this one so broad and so deep not even the Lion can jump over it, and they have to cut down a tree to cross over. These gulfs are obviously quite “recent” given that they actually break the road in two – which makes one wonder when, exactly, the road was created. Either the ditches are recent, either the road is very ancient. (Interestingly, in the audio series “Chronicles of Oz”, the explanation given to these huge breaks in the road was that the Wicked Witch of the East broke the Yellow Brick Road to prevent the Wizard from invading her domain). It is also very interesting to note that these ditches actually act as the “borders” of a very specific part of the forest, said to be “thick and gloomy” – the territory of the Kalidahs.
Kalidahs are one of the threats of Munchkin land, “monstrous beasts with bodies of bears and heads like tigers” the Lion says, with claws so long and sharp they could cut him in two. I’ll talk of the “mind” of the Kalidahs later, but I will already mention here that the mention of the Kalidahs as “monstrous”, especially when it is done by the Lion, himself a beast, seems to indicate that the Kalidahs are seen as monsters or abominations by the other beasts of Munchkinland. However, this should be taken with a grain of salt – it may also just be the Lion’s cowardliness speaking.
Immediately after crossing the great gulf, the trees become thinner and start to bear fruits (peaches and plums mostly, in the forest the only fruits available were nuts), until the Yellow Brick Road stops at a broad river. This broad river seems to act as the border between the Eastern lands and the central region of the Emerald City, so I’ll stop my description here.
However, note that to go from where she landed to the Emerald City, Dorothy had to walk around five or six days – four or five in Munchkin land, roughly one day to go from the river to the Emerald City. Some of you may like to calculate the amount of miles or kilometers she crossed in this time based on complex calculations… I remember someone once calculated the rough dimension of Oz… It must be still on DeviantArt somewhere
