An Interesting Theory

You run across the intriging things in the strangest places. Here's a "news" story on the BBC web site that reports on a literary interpretation of the book The Wizard of Oz. It made me stop and think. Nobody knows what was in Frank Baum's mind when he wrote the book, but this interpretation will enrich the experience for me. Now when I watch the movie I'll be thinking populist history of the late 19th century in the U.S. It will add to my enjoyment:

In 1964, high school teacher Henry Littlefield wrote an article outlining the notion of an underlying allegory in Baum's book. He said it offered a "gentle and friendly" critique of Populist thinking, and the story could be used to illuminate the late 19th Century to students.

... He believed the characters could represent the personalities and themes of the late 1800s,with Dorothy embodying the everyman American spirit.

US political historian Quentin Taylor, who supports this interpretation, says: "There are too many instances of parallels with the political events of the time.

"The Tin Woodman represents the industrial worker, the Scarecrow is the farmer and the Cowardly Lion is William Jennings Bryan."

Bryan was a Democratic presidential candidate who supported the silver cause. But he failed to win votes from eastern workers and lost the 1896 election. In the same way, the Lion's claws are nearly blunted by the Woodman's metallic shell.

The Wicked Witch of the West is associated with a variety of controversial personalities, chief among them the industrialist Mark Hanna, campaign manager to President William McKinley.

In this scenario, the yellow brick road symbolises the gold standard, the Emerald City becomes Washington DC and the Great Wizard characterises the president - and he is exposed as being less than truthful.

SYMBOLISM OF CHARACTERS

• Dorothy: Everyman American
• Scarecrow: Farmer
• Tin Woodman: Industrial worker
• Lion: William Jennings Bryan, politician who backed silver cause
• Wizard of Oz: US presidents of late 19th Century
• Wicked Witch: A malign Nature, destroyed by the farmers' most precious commodity, water. Or simply the American West
• Winged Monkeys: Native Americans or Chinese railroad workers, exploited by West
• Oz: An abbreviation of 'ounce' or, as Baum claimed, taken from the O-Z of a filing cabinet?
• Emerald City: Greenback paper money, exposed as fraud
• Munchkins: Ordinary citizens

Go read the whole article to get more details and background.

For more details:

(1) Here's a historians view of this interpretation. This statement in the essay caught my eye:

As scholars continued to extend and modify Littlefield's interpretation, laymen discovered it as well. Perhaps the best example was a widely-reprinted essay, first published in the Los Angeles Times in 1988, in which Michael A. Genovese described The Wonderful Wizard of Oz as "the story of the sad collapse of Populism and the issues upon which the movement was based." Genovese's brief analysis was pure Littlefield. But there was one notable (and somewhat disturbing) aspect of Genovese's piece: Littlefield's name was never mentioned.

(2) Look at this posting by a student raised on the Littlefield hypothesis. It includes an essay by Henry M. Littlefield:

The Tin Woodman, whom Dorothy meets on her way to the Emerald City, had been put under a spell by the Witch of the East. Once an independent and hard working human being, the Woodman found that each time he swung his axe it chopped off a different part of his body. Knowing no other trade he "worked harder than ever," for luckily in Oz tinsmiths can repair such things. Soon the Woodman was all tin (p. 59). In this way Eastern witchcraft dehumanized a simple laborer so that the faster and better he worked the more quickly he became a kind of machine. Here is a Populist view of evil Eastern influences on honest labor which could hardly be more pointed.