The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Summary

Dorothy lives on the grey Kansas prairie with her Uncle Henry, her Aunt Em and her little black dog Toto. When a cyclone strikes, Aunt Em and Uncle Henry reach the cellar, but Dorothy runs back for Toto, and the house is carried away with the two of them inside. It lands in the green and pleasant country of the Munchkins, right on top of the Wicked Witch of the East, killing her. The good Witch of the North gives Dorothy the dead witch's Silver Shoes and a protecting kiss on the forehead, and tells her that only the great Wizard Oz, in the Emerald City, can send her home. Dorothy follows the road of yellow brick. On the way she lifts a Scarecrow down from his pole, and he joins her to ask Oz for brains. She oils a Tin Woodman rusted stiff in the forest; he was once a Munchkin woodcutter whose enchanted axe, bewitched by the Wicked Witch of the East to stop his marriage, cut off his limbs one by one until a tinsmith had replaced him entirely with tin, and now he wants a heart. Then a Cowardly Lion springs at them, and Dorothy slaps his nose for trying to bite Toto; he comes along to ask for courage. After crossing a ditch and escaping the Kalidahs, they fall asleep in a field of deadly poppies; the Tin Woodman and Scarecrow carry Dorothy and the field mice drag the Lion on a wooden truck. In the Emerald City everyone wears green spectacles. Oz receives each traveller in a different terrible form and promises nothing until they kill the Wicked Witch of the West. That witch sends wolves, crows, bees and her Winkie soldiers against them, and at last uses the Golden Cap to call the Winged Monkeys, who scatter the Scarecrow's straw, dent the Tin Woodman, and carry off Dorothy and the Lion. Dorothy works as a servant until the witch steals one of her shoes; in anger Dorothy throws a bucket of water over her, and the witch melts away. The Winkies, freed, mend her friends. Back in the Emerald City, Toto knocks over a screen and reveals Oz as a little old man from Omaha, a ventriloquist and balloonist. He fills the Scarecrow's head with bran, pins and needles, gives the Tin Woodman a silk heart stuffed with sawdust, and gives the Lion a drink of courage, though each friend has already shown the quality he sought. Oz's balloon rises without Dorothy, so the friends travel south past fighting trees, living china people, a giant spider the Lion kills, and the Hammer-Heads, to Glinda. Glinda tells Dorothy that the Silver Shoes could have carried her home on the first day. Dorothy knocks her heels together three times and is home in Kansas, where Aunt Em runs to meet her. The book was published by the George M. Hill Company of Chicago in 1900, with colour pictures by W. W. Denslow.

Top Lessons

• You may already have what you are seeking

  The Scarecrow makes the plans, the Tin Woodman shows tender feeling, and the Lion fights the Kalidahs and the spider, all before Oz gives them anything. The Wizard's gifts only help them believe what their actions had already shown. Children can learn that wisdom, love and courage grow by being used.

• Real courage

  Oz tells the Lion that every living thing is afraid when it faces danger, and that true courage is facing danger when you are afraid. The Lion trembles before the Kalidahs and the spider and goes forward anyway. Being brave does not mean never feeling fear.

• There is no place like home

  The Scarecrow cannot understand why Dorothy would leave beautiful Oz for grey Kansas, and she tells him that people would rather live at home, however dreary, than anywhere else. All her adventures are a road back to Aunt Em. Love, not beauty, makes a place home.

• Things are not always what they seem

  The Emerald City looks green because of the spectacles, and the terrible Oz is a little man behind a screen. Yet the humbug does keep his promises as best he can. The story teaches children to look past appearances and to judge people by what they do.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

Medicine is incidental, but two episodes interest a medical reader. In the Deadly Poppy Field the scent of a vast bed of scarlet poppies puts Dorothy, Toto and the Lion into a sleep from which, the narrator says, they would never wake; the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman, who do not breathe, are unaffected. Baum does not mention opium, but readers of 1900 knew the poppy as the source of laudanum and morphine, and the scene is a fairy-tale picture of narcotic sleep; real poppies have no such effect by scent, so the danger is a matter of fancy. The Tin Woodman's history is a fairy-tale account of successive amputations, each limb replaced by a tinsmith, until the whole body is artificial, which some readers connect with the prosthetics of the period; that is a reading rather than Baum's stated intent. Oz's bran brains and sawdust heart, and the courage drink he pours from a green bottle, are placebo-like gifts that work because the recipients believe in them.

• Chapter V, The Rescue of the Tin Woodman

  The Tin Woodman tells how his enchanted axe cut off his legs, arms and head in turn and a tinsmith replaced each part with tin.

• Chapter VIII, The Deadly Poppy Field

  The scent of the poppies overpowers Dorothy, Toto and the Lion, and the friends who do not breathe must carry Dorothy out before she sleeps forever.

• Chapter XVI, The Magic Art of the Great Humbug

  Oz fills the Scarecrow's head with bran, gives the Tin Woodman a silk heart and pours courage for the Lion, knowing the gifts work by belief.