The Story: The Essence of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

A story is, "the actual progression of events through time that makes up the substance and the content of the narrative…The story is the content of the text: the events and the characters involved in them". (Grossberg, 163).

All of the adaptations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz share at least one common and binding trait: the basic story written by L. Frank Baum. That story is a very simple one. It is about the search for something that one already has. The elusive pursuit of knowledge, courage, intelligence, and a home are the intangibles many people look for at some point in life only to realize they only had to look within to find them. Baum's intention was not to attach a life lesson to the story; however, was to create a simple fairy tale in the tradition of Hans Christian Anderson and the Grimm Brothers without the gore that would be unsuitable for children. In support of this, Baum writes in the book's introduction:

...for the time has come for a series of newer "wonder tales" in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incident devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder-tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident.....'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. (Baum, 3-4)

Ironically The Wonderful Wizard Oz of is very much a fairy tale complete with the violence Baum was trying to avoid. As well, the work has been treated to a few different interpretations that claim feminist support and political intent rather than simple childhood entertainment.

Click here to read excerpts from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Josette Blackwood