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Mapping Oz
A narratological study of the setting and its politics in L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and gregory Maguire’s Wicked
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Abstract
L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has oftentimes been regarded as an allegory for the United States, mapping Oz onto the America Baum lived in. 95 years later, however, Gregory Maguire’s retelling, Wicked, gives the floor to Elphaba, or the Wicked Witch of the West. The novel emphasizes her perspective on Oz before, during, and after the Wizard’s coup. It thereby shifts the interpretation of a fairytale Oz as discovered by Dorothy to a repressed land suffering under the Wizard’s colonialist regime. Following Hutcheon’s notion of adaptation, this article maps Wicked’s setting onto the United States, analogous with Baum’s novel. It finds that Wicked focuses on the cultural heritage and historical suffering of the native population, criticizing Baum’s work for its inherent colonialism. When mapped onto American history, Maguire’s retelling recovers the Native Americans’ cultural heritage and agency over their homeland.
Keywords: adaptation, popular culture, American culture
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Mapping the land of Oz: Baum vs Maguire
- 2.1The map of Oz
- 2.2Projected onto reality
- 3.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Author queries
Works Cited
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