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Literature / The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
aka: The Wizard Of Oz

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Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman meet the Cowardly Lion.

"The story of 'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' was written solely to pleasure children of today. It aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out."
L. Frank Baum, The introduction to first-print copies of the book

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum in 1900, was an instant success, which has been much homaged and parodied. It spawned many sequels, beginning with The Marvelous Land of Oz. For the rest, see here.

Dorothy is a little girl from Kansas whose farmhouse is carried away to Oz by a cyclone, with her and her dog Toto inside. The cyclone drops the house on the Wicked Witch of the East, killing her. Dorothy is quickly hailed by the native Munchkins as a hero, but wants nothing more than to get home. The unnamed Good Witch of the North is sympathetic, but unfortunately has never heard of this strange place called "Kansas". So she gives Dorothy the wicked witch's silver shoes, kisses her on the forehead for magical protection, and sends her off to the capital — the Emerald City — to ask the Wizard who rules there for his advice.

Along the way, Dorothy meets the Scarecrow (who wants a brain), the Tin Woodman (who misses his heart), and the Cowardly Lion (who wishes he had courage). Together they travel to the Emerald City and ask for help from the Wizard, who orders them to first kill the aptly-named Wicked Witch of the West. When the Witch sees Dorothy and her friends heading towards her lair, she enslaves the girl and schemes to claim the magical silver shoes for herself.

The book has received quite a few adaptations since its publication, with the 1939 movie musical The Wizard of Oz becoming the most famous version of the story. While the basic plot structure seems close, the movie made several deviations and edits – for instance the film's having only one Good Witch instead of two, the complete omission of the Dénouement journey after the defeat of the Wicked Witch, and most significantly the ending (the film implies Dorothy's adventure is All Just a Dream, while in the book it's most definitely real).

Check out the Character Sheet.

The original book is now in the public domain and can be read here.

For a list of the many, many adaptations, see Land of Oz, and for Whole-Plot Reference episodes and parodies in other works, see Off to See the Wizard.


The book version of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz includes examples of:

  • All Just a Dream: Averted in the original books. Baum himself stated that the land of Oz is located somewhere in the world, it's just surrounded by impassable desert.
  • And I Must Scream: The Tin Woodman was stuck with his joints rusted, unable to move or even speak. Who knows how much longer he would have been stuck there had Dorothy and the Scarecrow not encountered him?
  • Applied Phlebotinum: The Wicked Witch of the West's Golden Cap, which she uses to control the Winged Monkeys.
  • Armless Biped: Hammerheads, who attack by extending their necks à la a jack-in-the-box.
  • A World Half Full: In the first five paragraphs of the novel, the great Kansas prairies is established as a place where the sun had baked the plowed land into a gray mass, with little cracks running through it. The house, Uncle Henry and Aunt Em had been made as gray as the prairie by the unforgiving sun, they never laughed, and they lived in a house with only a room, in Perpetual Poverty. However, It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings. Toto was not gray; he was a little black dog, with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose. Toto played all day long, and Dorothy played with him, and loved him dearly.. It’s those words that’s transform Kansas from a Crapsack World into A World Half Full, and that establish the true reason Dorothy needs to return to Kansas: She is the only thing standing between two persons and complete despair. This idea, that the only thing human beings truly need is each other (or a dog) is the Central Theme of the book.
  • The Beastmaster: the Wicked Witch of the West's main source of power is in her animal servants — a pack of black wolves, a murder of crows, a swarm of black bees, and the Golden Cap that allows her to summon the Winged Monkeys thrice. When most of those minions are slain and the Cap's powers exhausted, the Witch seems to be almost powerless.
  • Bee-Bee Gun: The Wicked Witch of the West can control a bee swarm.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: The Tin Woodman. Sweetest, nicest, most loyal guy you'd ever encounter. Cried himself rusted over accidentally killing a harmless bug. Threaten an innocent life, and his axe will be used to make the offender a head shorter.
  • Bond Villain Stupidity: The Wicked Witch of the West is too concerned about self-preservation to even try to steal Dorothy's silver slippers (due to her fear of the dark and her weakness against water). Of course, she later wises up and steals one slipper using a cheap shot (read: invisible brick). Unfortunately for her, when Dorothy's slippers are messed with, it's a Berserk Button; Dorothy swiftly retaliates by weaponizing the Witch's weakness and mopping up the remains. Justified — in the novel, the Good Witch of the North put a protection spell on Dorothy in addition to granting her the shoes. This is why both the Winged Monkeys and the Witch are afraid to harm her. Of course, that didn't prevent the Witch in either version from torturing Dorothy's friends to get her compliance. note 
  • Boring Return Journey: There's quite a lot of story after the Wicked Witch of the West is killed, but not a whole lot of danger.
  • Bridge Logic: The Scarecrow has the Tin Woodman do this by chopping down a tree... and then has him chop it down again, with the pursuing Kalidahs still on it. The book was published in 1900, making this one Older Than Television.
  • City of Gold: The Emerald City.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The cyclone actually sets in motion the plots for later books. In order to cope with the residual stress from Dorothy being carried away, Uncle Henry decides to take a vacation. Dorothy joins him, but ends up in Oz a second time after being blown overboard from their ship. Later, the destruction of their house and farm via that cyclone took a toll on Henry and Em's finances, leaving them unable to afford to live anywhere. Dorothy and Ozma bring them to Oz so they would never need to worry about money again.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Blue is the color of the Munchkins and Green is the color of the Emerald City. Witches all wear white so when the Munchkins see Dorothy wearing her white and blue checked dress they assume she is a witch as well as a friend to them because of those colors. Furthermore, yellow is the favorite color of the Winkies in the West (they're even called Yellow Winkies), and red for the Quadlings of the South. Kansas praire is described as gray due to the sun and the wind: Gray are the houses, the fields and even the grass, Uncle Henry and aunt Emma, who never laughed, were gray too, Toto was a little black dog that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings.
  • Cowardly Lion: The Trope Namer, although while he professes to be a thorough coward, his actions in defense of his friends consistently speak otherwise.
  • Creepy Crows: A murder of crows serves the Wicked Witch of the West. She sends them out to kill Dorothy and her companions, but the Scarecrow kills them instead.
  • Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: The Tin Man is convinced of this, despite being the most empathetic person in the series and prone to Tender Tears.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Surprisingly, the narrator in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz shows this at times.
    "For," they said, "there is not another city in all the world that is ruled by a stuffed man." And, so far as they knew, they were quite right.
  • Down the Rabbit Hole: Dorothy's magical transportation to Oz via cyclone.
  • Early Installment Character-Design Difference: W. W. Denslow's illustrations depict Dorothy as a very little girl with brown Girlish Pigtails. Starting with the third book, John R. Neill codified her as a 9-12 year old with a blonde '20s Bob Haircut. Later artists differ on which design they use, but most stick to Neill's blonde version.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • The Wicked Witch of the East is killed and turns to dust, the Tin Woodman kills several animals and mentions that his human parents died some time ago, and the Wicked Witch of the West turns into a puddle and is swept out the door. The third book establishes that no one can die in Oz. Even if you have your head cut off, you'll still be alive and aware (albeit in no pain).
    • There's no references to the original rulers of Oz, King Pastoria or Princess Ozma, who were introduced in the sequel.
    • There's a passing reference to children in the Emerald City buying lemonade with green pennies. Later books establish that the people of Oz don't use money, but share with each other out of the goodness of their hearts.
    • Emerald City isn't really made of emeralds: the Wizard just makes everyone wear green-tinted glasses, under the excuse that sights would be too blinding without them. Later books establish Emerald City as being the real thing, usually with characters wanting to steal its treasures.
  • Enslaved Tongue: Unlike most Oz animals, the Wicked Witch's winged monkey minions do not speak, at least until Dorothy defeats the witch and they explain she had been controlling them with her Hat of Power, which included silencing their ability to protest against some of the horrible things she compelled them to do.
  • Everybody Cries:
    • When Dorothy first enters Oz, she asks the Witch of the North if she can help her meet the Wizard of Oz so she can get back home. The Witch however says she can't help and Dorothy may have to remain in Oz, causing her to start crying. The Munchkins who greeted Dorothy now feel bad for her and pull out handkerchiefs and begin to cry along with her.
    • When Dorothy is finally about to return home she says goodbye to her friends, all of whom are weeping (even when it's dangerous for the Tin Woodman to do so), and Dorothy suddenly realizes she's crying as well.
  • Evil Makes You Ugly: All the bad witches are ugly.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending: Natch. This goes double for the book, in which after journeying all that way to see the wizard, the company then has to make another journey to Glinda so Dorothy can go home.
  • Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Quite a few characters, including the Wicked Witches of the East and West, the Good Witch of the North and the wizard himself even in his true form.
  • Exact Words: Whoever owns the Golden Cap is allowed to summon the Winged Monkeys to their aid exactly three times. When Dorothy tries to use the Cap's charm to ask the Monkeys to take her home to Kansas, they explain that crossing the Deadly Desert is the one thing they can't do...and unfortunately, since the rules explicitly say that the wearer can summon the apes thrice, the failure counts as one of Dorothy's uses; the enchantment doesn't say anything about the Winged Monkeys successfully completing the given task.
  • Fairy Tale: Wizard of Oz was Baum's attempt to write an "American" fairy tale. A supposedly less violent and frightening version, he said.
  • Family-Unfriendly Death:
    • The deaths of the wolves:
      He seized his axe, which he had made very sharp, and as the leader of the wolves came on the Tin Woodman swung his arm and chopped the wolf’s head from its body, so that it immediately died. As soon as he could raise his axe another wolf came up, and he also fell under the sharp edge of the Tin Woodman’s weapon. There were forty wolves, and forty times a wolf was killed, so that at last they all lay dead in a heap before the Woodman.
    • The deaths of the crows:
      The King Crow flew at the Scarecrow, who caught it by the head and twisted its neck until it died. And then another crow flew at him, and the Scarecrow twisted its neck also. There were forty crows, and forty times the Scarecrow twisted a neck, until at last all were lying dead beside him.
    • In a scene unimaginable in any movie version, the Lion decapitates a Giant Spider with his claws!
    • In a roundabout way, the original Woodman, who kept having body parts cut off him til there was no Woodman left and just essentially a tin robot with his memories.
  • Family-Unfriendly Violence: The Tin Woodman's origin among others.
  • Feet of Clay: The wizard himself.
  • Forbidden Zone: The Deadly Desert.
  • Four-Temperament Ensemble: The main quartet fits these types, with the Cowardly Lion as choleric/melancholic, the Tin Woodsman as melancholic/sanguine, the Scarecrow as sanguine/choleric, and Dorothy as leukine/phlegmatic.
  • Gem-Encrusted: Downplayed with the Golden Cap, which has "a circle of sparkling diamonds and red rubies running around its solid gold brim".
  • Giant Spider: Or something like it:
    "We are all threatened," answered the tiger, "by a fierce enemy which has lately come into this forest. It is a most tremendous monster, like a great spider, with a body as big as an elephant and legs as long as a tree trunk. It has eight of these long legs, and as the monster crawls through the forest he seizes an animal with a leg and drags it to his mouth, where he eats it as a spider does a fly. Not one of us is safe while this fierce creature is alive, and we had called a meeting to decide how to take care of ourselves when you came among us."
  • God Guise: The wizard is just a fraud from Omaha.
  • Good All Along: All of the Wicked Witch's servants, including the Winged Monkeys. They're perfectly nice creatures, and are only acting evil because of their fear of her.
  • Good Thing You Can Heal: Not having a brain, the Scarecrow never thinks to avoid pits in the road that keep tripping him, but luckily he can't actually get hurt.
  • Graceful Loser: The Wicked Witch of the West accepts her fate once it's clear that she's screwed on account of that convenient bucket of water. Her parting words to Dorothy, in which she admits that Dorothy caught her completely by surprise but beat her fair and square nonetheless, even say as much.
    Wicked Witch of the West: Well, in a few minutes I shall be all melted, and you will have the castle to yourself. I have been wicked in my day, but I never thought a little girl like you would ever be able to melt me and end my wicked deeds. Look out—here I go!
  • Hat of Power: The Golden Cap that allows the wearer to summon the Winged Monkeys thrice.
  • Heart Trauma: The Tin Woodman's entire motivation in the original book that he erroneously believed he was experiencing this. Since he had literally lost his heart, he thought he had lost his capacity for kindness and love. In fact, he was almost saintlike in his love and kindness toward nearly everything he met; he just wasn't sentimental or strongly emotional.
  • Home Sweet Home: Dorothy's only thought is to get home to her aunt and uncle. At one point, the Scarecrow asks her why does she want to leave a beautiful place like Oz for grey and dreary Kansas. Dorothy responds: "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."
  • The Homeward Journey: Dorothy's overall goal in the adventure is to find a way back to Kansas.
  • I Owe You My Life: After the Tin Woodman saves a mouse from a wildcat, he is surprised when the mouse reveals that she is the queen of all fieldmice, and declares that her subjects will obey any request for help he might make, which allows the Woodman and the Scarecrow to rescue the sleeping Lion from the poppy field.
  • Informed Flaw: The Scarecrow doesn't have a brain, but he is usually the one who uses logical thinking to assist the group. The Tin Woodman doesn't have a heart, but he is so worried about seeming heartless that he acts with great care and compassion. The Lion claims he has no courage, but he repeatedly tries to make heroic sacrifices to save his friends.
  • Invisible Block: Well, an invisible iron bar, which the Wicked Witch summons to make Dorothy lose a shoe.
  • Irony: The Scarecrow wants a brain, the Tin Woodman wants a heart, and the Cowardly Lion wants courage. Throughout their adventures, guess who comes up with all the plans, is unusually tender-hearted, and casually displays real courage? Yeah...
  • It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Dorothy sure has to go through a lot because of those shoes.
  • It Was with You All Along: Dorothy is an example, as are the other three main characters.
  • I Was Quite a Looker:
    • Aunt Em is said to have been cheerful and pretty when she came to live in Kansas but the sun and wind took away her sparkle and left her sad and grey.
    • The original (pre-Tin) Woodman was quite handsome, brave and dashing, according to the Tin Woodman.
  • Kill It with Fire: Discussed. The Scarecrow feels no pain and can recover from any injury as long as his body remains more or less intact (new straw and he's good to go), but if he catches fire, he'll be dead for real.
  • Kill It with Water: How the Wicked Witch of the West meets her demise.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: The Wicked Witch steals one of Dorothy's silver slippers with a surprise attack, and is herself done in by a surprise attack courtesy of Dorothy almost as quickly.
  • Literal Change of Heart: The Tin Man, who wants to get a heart from the Wizard. (May be a subversion, in that he's just as nice without it.)
  • Logical Weakness: The Scarecrow, being cloth and straw, is afraid of fire. The Tin Woodman will rust at the joints and become unable to move if he is in prolonged contact with water. One explanation for the Witch of the West's weakness to water, as offered by a popular theory, is that the Witch is all but made of brown sugar, and given sugar's reaction to water...
  • Made a Slave: The Witch of the West does this to Dorothy since she can't harm her due to the protection spell the Witch of the North placed upon her. She also attempts to do this with the Cowardly Lion, but he threatens to attack her if she comes near, so she tries to starve him into submission. It doesn't work because Dorothy sneaks him food in the middle of the night.
  • Mage Species: This book introduced this trope, according to Martin Gardner. Apparently L. Frank Baum wanted to avoid religious objections from parents on the grounds that witches are the result of a Deal with the Devil and thus there cannot be good witches, so he made witchcraft an inherent trait and classified witches as good or evil based on how they used their magic, not the magic's origin.
  • Magical Accessory: The Silver Shoes. The North Witch doesn't know what power they have, so she referred Dorothy to the Wizard. The Wizard turned out to be a Con Artist, so they have to go to Glinda the South Witch, who does know what they do.
  • Magically-Binding Contract: The Winged Monkeys are magically compelled to obey whoever wears the Golden Cap and grant them whatever request they want three times. The King of the Monkeys explains that this was part of a deal they struck with the Cap's creator, a sorceress named Gayelette. After the apes played a prank on Gayelette's fiance Quelala, she was ready to have them put to death; thanks to the leader's pleas and Quelala thinking the prank was funny, she instead cast the binding charm, which Quelala used to send them away to avoid provoking the sorceress any further.
  • Magic Feather: Dorothy's friends already possess the qualities that they seek, but they insist on getting a Magic Feather from the Wizard anyway.
  • Magic Kiss: Dorothy receives a kiss which marks her as under the protection of the Witch of the North.
  • Magical Land: Oz and the countries around it.
  • The Magocracy: The Quadling (South) Country of Oz is this, being ruled by Glinda. The Witches of the East and West rule their domains, as does the North Witch. And over them is the Wizard, who put the four into an Enforced Cold War. Dorothy showing up and upsetting the balance of power starts unraveling everything.
  • Matchstick Weapon: The only thing the Scarecrow is afraid of is a lighted match, which might burn him up very quickly.
  • Mistaken Nationality / Mistaken for Terrorist: Dorothy's Iconic Outfit of blue and white gingham caused a case of this upon landing. Munchkins are short and favor the color blue. Also, white is a color only magic users wear. As far as they could tell, Dorothy came out of nowhere and assassinated the tyrant in charge via flying house. When they looked in and saw her, they mistook her for a full-grown (albeit young) and unknown Munchkin sorceress with unknown intentions. Not surprisingly, Boq quickly called the closest benign Witch (the North) for backup.
  • Mix-and-Match Critters: The winged monkeys, and the Kalidahs (part tiger, part bear).
  • Monster Façade: The Cowardly Lion is afraid of almost everything, but once he realized that every creature in the forest ran from him because they assumed he was a ferocious lion, he ran with the facade in the hopes that no one would actually call his bluff and challenge him.
  • Non-Human Sidekick: Lots of them.
  • No-Sell: The Wicked Witch of The West uses wolves and bees against Dorothy's party... that includes a tireless scarecrow who feels no pain and an equally tireless metal man whose body is completely impervious to bites and stings.
  • Not the Fall That Kills You…: Downplayed. It is mentioned that "if Dorothy had not been lying on the soft bed she might have been hurt" when the house hit the ground, but in real life it would have taken a lot more than a soft bed to protect her from being injured or even killed by the impact. Possibly Justified by this being Oz and not earth.
  • Offered the Crown: The Wizard leaves Oz under the rule of The Scarecrow. It doesn't last.
  • Outside-the-Box Tactic: See Weaksauce Weakness below.
  • Parental Bonus: Courage takes the form of a liquid. Or, at least, the kind of courage that "makes you forget you are afraid" does. Or so the Wizard claims.
  • Plot Armor: The Good Witch of the North's kiss prevents anything in Oz from harming Dorothy.
  • Phlebotinum-Proof Robot: The scarecrow and tin woodman, who don't need to breathe, are not put to sleep by the poppy field which did put Dorothy, Toto and the lion to sleep.
  • Phony Degree: For the Scarecrow.
  • Public Domain Character: The copyright on this book and its characters lapsed in 1959.
  • Protective Charm: The Good Witch's kiss, the Silver Shoes.
  • Pun: The Wizard makes brains for the Scarecrow out of bran cereal with pins and needles. He calls them bran new brains which will make him "sharp as a pin".
  • Punch-Clock Villain: The Winged Monkeys and the Winky soldiers the Wicked Witch sends after Dorothy and her friends have no real hate against the group. The Winkies are simply her slaves, while the Winged Monkeys must follow any orders they are given because the Witch holds the Golden Cap.
  • The Quest: Dorothy's quest to go home.
  • Quest to the West: The heroes head west twice: once to Emerald City and again to defeat the Wicked Witch of the West.
  • Really Was Born Yesterday: The Scarecrow.
  • Rust-Removing Oil: How the Tin Woodman's mobility is restored and maintained.
  • Serial Prostheses: The Tin Woodman is an extreme example, having literally replaced his entire body serially.
  • Set Bonus: While you need both slippers to get wishes, just wearing one is a powerful Protective Charm.
  • Shadow Dictator: The Wizard. Few of his own people had ever seen the wizard, and those who claimed to have seen him disagreed as to who or what they'd seen. He turns out to be The Man Behind the Curtain, using special effects to create an illusionary appearance.
  • Shining City: The Emerald City. Zig-Zagged as it's not really shiny (everyone is just wearing tinted glasses), but it is a pleasant place despite not actually being covered in jewels past the outside walls.
  • Shrouded in Myth: The Wizard. Few claim to have seen him and no one who sees him reports seeing the same thing. Justified as he's quite good at illusions and tricks that no one in Oz but him knows how to pull off.
  • Single-Palette Town: The Emerald City and each of the four quadrants of Oz: blue for the Munchkins to the east, yellow for the Winkies to the west, and red for the Quadlings to the south. Though this book does not mention it, the Gillikins in the north have purple.
    • To be fair, in at least the first books, the Emerald City is only apparently all-green because anyone entering/living there is made to wear green-lensed glasses that make everything look that way.
    • Also, gray for Kansas.
  • Sorting Algorithm of Threatening Geography: We begin in idyllic rural Munchkin Country and then pass through (in this order) a deep forest, a field of poisonous poppies, a country controlled by a wicked witch, a bizarre wilderness populated by fighting trees and creatures with spring-loaded heads, and then, to top it all off, a city full of unfriendly people who are made of porcelain. There are multiple pleasant (i.e. less weird) spots along the way, of course, but the general tendency seems to be that the journey just keeps getting weirder.
  • Talking Animal: The Lion is a big cat that is intelligent and can talk, but is perfectly normal otherwise.
  • Tears of Remorse: The Tin Woodman's tears rust his mouth shut after he accidentally steps on a beetle.
  • Technicolor Death: The Wicked Witch of the West melts after being thrown a bucket of water, her weakness.
  • Tender Tears: The Tin Woodman is prone to this, but he has to be careful because his tears can cause his joints to rust.
  • There's No Place Like Home: Dorothy's reason for wanting to see the Wizard, to the extent that she almost name-drops the Trope while chatting with the Scarecrow.
    Scarecrow: I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas.
    Dorothy: That is because you have no brains. 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.
  • Theseus' Ship Paradox: The Tin Woodman pissed off a witch who enchanted his ax so that it would cut off pieces of him, and he went to a tinsmith to replace the missing parts. Eventually he was made entirely out of tin — but since it was a gradual process, he's still human Nick Chopper and not a new person — maybe. The Woodman does refer to Nick in the past tense.
  • Threshold Guardians: The Guardian of the Gates of the Emerald City
  • Trapped in Another World: Dorothy and, for that matter, the Wizard.
  • Treants: The Fighting Trees are a take on this that predates most well-known uses: they precede Tolkien's Ents by five and a half decades or so, and resemble trees with human-like faces and arm-like branches that attack intruders by grabbing them or throwing their own fruit at them. While they don't have the ambulatory nature of later treants, they still share their dislike for interlopers in their woods — their purpose seems to be to keep intruders from entering the enchanted forest behind them, as Dorothy and her group find out when they try to enter it and the trees attack them.
  • Unable to Support a Wife: In the Tin Woodman's Back Story, the reason the witch gave for keeping him from marrying.
  • Vertebrate with Extra Limbs. The Winged Monkeys are just that — monkeys which have wings.
  • Weaksauce Weakness: The Wicked Witch of the West melts when hit by water.
  • When Trees Attack: The Fighting Trees they run into while they going to Glinda's palace in the south.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: The Scarecrow mentions to Dorothy that the only thing he's afraid of is a lighted match. Given his rather flammable nature as a humanoid made chiefly of straw, his fear is entirely justified.
  • Wicked Witch: Obviously, the Wicked Witches of the West and East. The Good Witches of the North and South are an inversion (and a rather radical one too, as the notion of a good witch was alien at the time).
  • Widow's Weeds: Dorothy fears that if she doesn't return, Aunt Em will think she is dead and go into mourning, and Uncle Henry won't be able to afford the required mourning wardrobe.
  • Wife Husbandry: Dorothy is told a story about the history of Oz in which the Sorceress Gayelette in the North (implied to be someone other than the Good Witch of the North that Dorothy met, but the latter only gets a name in adaptations and second-party continuations) couldn't find a suitable husband, so she picked an attractive little boy and had him raised to be her ideal husband.
  • A Wizard Did It: Justified in the overall Oz chronicles, many of the witches fulfill the same niche as creator gods and godlings in most other fantasy universes and many real world religions, particularly the Good Witches of the North and South.
  • The Wonderland: Oz itself, with talking scarecrows and robots before there were robots...


Aunt Em had just come out of the house to water the cabbages when she looked up and saw Dorothy running toward her.
"My darling child!" she cried, folding the little girl in her arms and covering her face with kisses. "Where in the world did you come from?"
"From the Land of Oz," said Dorothy gravely. "And here is Toto, too. And oh, Aunt Em! I'm so glad to be at home again!"


Alternative Title(s): The Wizard Of Oz

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