“The Wizard of Oz” was written in 1939 while the Depression was hanging about in everyone’s kitchen. People were looking for cheery tales – and authors liked to use hidden meanings when creating them.
Consequently, this little fantasy has been analyzed for symbolism ever since. The main characterizations have been: Yellow Brick Road represents the monetary gold standard; Cowardly Lion is William Jennings Bryan, a three-time candidate for president who wanted silver as specie; and Emerald City is a new start for America. Among the more remote theories: Freudians thought (as Freudians tend to do) that the story was a sexual allegory.
Not liking the main theories, and not satisfied with Freudian balderdash, Professor Lucius Flatley thought it might be time to look at the tale as a present-day allegory. The resulting coffee shop conclusions are summarized:
According to the caffeine theoreticians, Dorothy represents the people of the United States searching for something better. She is the “middle class” voter anxious to pay debts, get medical care, save for retirement, educate the kids, stop the wars. Her dog Toto makes this clear. When Dorothy says to him, “I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” she is saying that people are discovering they were in a United States they no longer recognized – one with an extremely unequal distribution of wealth, a stagnating middle class, outrageous financial thieves calling themselves Masters of the Universe and a Congress owned by corporate and money interests.
The tornado is the financial meltdown of the last year or so with the loss of jobs,home foreclosures, lack of credit, drop in stock market, evaporation of retirement savings or benefits.
The Tin Man is the industrial worker from America’s rust belt – Joe Six-Pack who has been damaged by the slaughter of unions and by the unplanned problems of free trade. The oil can that free up his joints is (hopefully) the stimulus. The Scarecrow represents the truly desperate Americans – unemployed, homeless, on food stamps.
The group settled on George Bush as the Cowardly Lion, a good person who meant well but who was so ill prepared and uncertain of himself he couldn’t control his advisers. He certainly was easily scared of things like imaginary WMDs. He was one who needed vacations and bike rides and brush clearing to avoid problems.
The ruby slippers also produced argument. Some liked Sarah Palin, who was beautiful and might produce the magic of an electoral victory by winking. Others preferred the idea of a fashion statement by Michelle Obama, with her sculptured arms and stylish dresses.
The Yellow Brick Road is the two-year campaign and eventual selection of a new president with new ideas, philosophy and ability. The Emerald City is Washington in all of its sound and fury, flashing lights and false fronts – its expensively dressed little people believing their own importance as they enjoy medical care and safe retirement.
The Good Witch of the North is surely Obama. True, his color is not as white as the group assumed for an angel, but they thought that he may have spent too much time on the beach in Hawaii.
Munchkins were NASCAR fans and family-values voters who used to spend their time watching Fox News but who finally discovered that there was a world of truth and reason they were missing.
There was debate about the Wizard and the Wicked Witch of the West. Candidates for either or both were Karl Rove, who corrupted open, honest government, or Dick Cheney who made a mockery of poor George Bush by manipulating the controls of him on the large screen, trying to frighten people into going to war The runner-up was Rush Limbaugh, whose audience of self-described ditto heads looks a good deal like the Winged Monkeys – malicious figures not smart enough to act on their own.
Finally, the group noted that although the title itself, Oz, has been manipulated through at least a dozen doctoral dissertations – everything from a play on Hebrew words in Genesis to (of course) sex symbols, they couldn’t find a meaningful symbol.
Especially after Lucius told them that the author, Frank Baum, when asked, had said O Z represented letters on the file cabinet he was looking at when he wrote the book.
Rodney Quinn, who lives in Gorham, is a former Maine secretary of state. He can be reached at rquinn@maine.rr.com.
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