Parable of Populism

by Aisha Gilani

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The connection between The Wizard of Oz and the contemporary political landscape was not even raised until 1963, when a summer school teacher named Henry Littlefield, while trying to teach the 1896 Presidential election and the turn-of-the-century Populist movement to bored history students, stumbled upon the idea of using the characters and events of The Wizard of Oz as metaphors to teach the concepts. He and his students made a number of connections: the Scarecrow represented the farmers, the Tin Woodman the factory workers, the Wizard was President Grover Cleveland or Republican presidential candidate William McKinley, the Cowardly Lion was Democratic presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan and the silver shoes were the silver standard, the yellow brick road the gold standard. Littlefield eventually wrote an article, "The Wizard of Oz: A Parable on Populism," which was published in the magazine American Quarterly in 1964.

Littlefield's article seems not to have been taken to heart and was generally forgotten, until Gore Vidal, writing about Oz in The New York Review of Books in 1977, mentioned the article, and the idea took off. Unfortunately a number of other articles later came out that misunderstood or reinterpreted what Littlefield had said or meant, and other writers took the ideas even further, many not even aware of Littlefield's original essay. Some of these interpretations even contradict each other, and others invented political leanings for Baum. Some of these interpretations have been embraced by college professors and other academics as the "true" meaning behind The Wizard of Oz. Littlefield took pains to say, then and later, that he does not believe Baum had a political agenda in writing The Wizard of Oz, and that his observations were allegorical, not theoretical. The Baum family and many Oz and Baum scholars have also proclaimed that it was not Baum's intention to write a deliberate political allegory. However, Baum merely wanted to tell a good story, and not to add any hidden meaning. It is also interesting to note that Baum's biographers are opposed to the notion that Baum had any political intent in writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. If Baum had been a Populist supporter, the imagery in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz suggests that Baum had lost his zeal for the Populist movement. Where the Populists looked to the federal government, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz delivers the message that the wizard's power is all an illusion and it is misguided to look to him for solutions. Baum, in fact, is suggesting the opposite: people can find their own solutions by looking within themselves, not to any external power.

 

 

 

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