Frank Baum's story
Frank Baum’s story is a fairy tale about a girl named Dorothy, who was an orphan and lived with her uncle in Kansas. One day a wild cyclone swept across the community where Dorothy and her uncle had been living in and swept their house (Baum 7). At the time, only Dorothy and her small dog Toto were at home. When the cyclone was over, Dorothy found herself in a different place, their house had been swept and landed on the Wicked Witch of the East. There, Dorothy makes new friends and starts a journey to return back to Kansas though she undergoes a lot of obstacles and struggles together with her newly found friends. The entire plot of the story revolves around Dorothy’s attempt to get back to Kansas.
The fascinating friends
The most fascinating and interesting part of the story is the friends that Dorothy finds after the cyclone takes her to a new world. In her journey to the city of Emerald where Dorothy was going to meet the Great Oz who would guide her back to Kansas, Dorothy meets two interesting friends. One is a Scarecrow, then the Tin Woodman and the Cowardly Lion. Just like Dorothy, each of this three characters had a favor to ask from the Great Oz. It is their desires that I find to be the most interesting and appealing account of the story. The Scarecrow desired to have a brain, the Tin Woodman wanted a heart, and the Cowardly Lion wanted courage. There different desires are quite interesting, Baum uses the irony behind the character's requests to make the story appealing to the reader (Dighe 22).
The irony of desires
It is ironical that a lion can be a coward. Lions are known to be the fiercest animal in the jungle. In fact, in most cases, a lion would be presented as the king of the jungle. However, Baum chooses to portray the lion in this case as a coward. It is ironical that an animal which is known to be courageous and most feared by other animals is the one looking for courage since he considers himself a coward. Similarly, it is ironical that a Scarecrow desires to have a brain. After finding out the Scarecrow’s desire, am sure most readers are asking themselves why would a Scarecrow need a brain? It is also quite interesting that the Tin Woodman desires to have a heart. Other than the irony behind the requests by all the three friends of Dorothy, the author uses personification as a style to give human attributes such as having a brain and a heart to the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman respectively (Sragow 283).
An interesting journey
Together with the three newly found friends, Dorothy embarks on a journey to look for the Great Oz. Their journey is also quite interesting as they undergo a lot of challenges and obstacles along the way. However, together, they manage to conquer all these obstacles and challenges on their way to seek their wants (Tuerk 13). The author ensures that the ready is part of Dorothy’s journey as he engages the reader by involving fascinating encounters of Dorothy and her friends with the various obstacles they come across in their journey to the Great Oz. It is through the obstacles that Dorothy and her three friends encounter that the reader is made aware of the various abilities and strengths that the characters possessed.
Vital role of the characters
Each of the three characters plays a vital role in Dorothy’s journey. The journey to the Wicked Witch of the west was one of the hardest ones, they encounter a swarm of black bees, a flock of wild crows and a troop of wolves. The Scarecrow plays a role of killing the wild crows, the Cowardly Lion scares the Winkies away while the Tin Woodman chopped the wolves to death and the black bees die trying to sting the Tin Woodman (Baum & Maureen 12). It is through this scene of the story that the reader realizes that perhaps the characters were not as weak as they had been portrayed at the beginning of the story. The Cowardly Lion whose desire is to have courage is the same lion that scares away the Winkies in this scene.
Appealing to the reader
Baum’s succeeds in appealing in the reader’s emotions and manages to capture and maintain the reader’s attention throughout the entire story. The author uses Dorothy’s captivating journey of seeking to return to Kansas as a strategy to capture and maintain the reader’s attention. Dorothy’s story is like a dream, a dream that most readers would relate to as most of them experience dreams where there are taken to a different place and encounter different people and things. Through Dorothy’s three friends, the reader is able to relate to instances where we tend to desire things that we already have within us (Schwartz 9).
Works Cited
Baum, L F, and Maureen Lipman. The Wizard of Oz. North Kingstown, R.I: BBC Audiobooks America, 2007.
Baum, L F. The Wizard of Oz. Portsmouth, R.I: Jimcin Recordings, 1977.
Dighe, Ranjit S. The Historian's Wizard of Oz: Reading L. Frank Baum's Classic as a Political and Monetary Allegory. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2002.
Schwartz, Evan I. Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.
Sragow, M. "Putting Oz into The Wizard of Oz." Victor Fleming, 2013, pp. 282-315, doi:10.5810/kentucky/9780813144412.003.0022.
Tuerk, Richard C. Oz in Perspective: Magic and Myth in the L. Frank Baum Books. Jefferson, N.C: McFarland & Co, 2007.
