Scratch
Here you will find older scratches, musings and other detritus that once were located on the front pages, but have now faded.
Filed away here to collect dust and cobwwwebs in perpetuity, links may break, facts may change and data may corrupt.
On occasion I may come down here to tidy, but for the most, I prefer to leave the past where it lies.
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Gregory Maguire
When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in the classic novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, we heard only one side of the story. But what of her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch?
Long before Dorothy drops in, a girl is born in Oz with emerald green skin. Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous witch, is a smart, prickly and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived ideas about the nature of good and evil.
Taking readers past the yellow brick road and into a phantasmagoric world, Gregory Maguire’s novel is a rich and triumphant feat of imagination and allegory. It is an acclaimed New York Times bestseller and the inspiration for a hit Broadway musical, and has sold over two million copies.
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West is a parallel novel which centres around Elphaba, the misunderstood green-skinned girl who grows up to become the infamous Wicked Witch of the West in the L.F.Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The novel itself is a critical analysis of what good and evil really are, and this is explored through commentary on the social-political order of Oz and the ethical issues raised. It also touches on issues such as nature/nurture and the notion that history is only written by the victors.
As story unfolds, we see Elphaba grow into a indepedant woman with strong ideals who fights against the tyrannical Wizard and his minions, cultivating others to fight prejudice and injustice, directed against the Animals (with a capital 'A') in the form of segregation, restriction of rights and subjugation. However, as the book goes on, it seems that her actions can only bring hardship and sadness for those close to her.
We know from Baum's books where the story is going, but that doesn't make it any less exciting to read as Maguire offers the same story just subtly altered, and without contradicting anything previously written, certainly nothing that cannot be explained away by looking at each historys author as it were. We also see explanations as to some of the weirder aspects of Baum's original work such as Elphaba's winged monkeys.
When the book comes to an end, you can't help but feeling a twinge of sadness for Elphaba, who throughout the course of the book has done very little that could be considered 'wicked', merely having inhereted the title from her geographical displacement to sister Nessarose as much as anything else. She is someone who has been misunderstood, and for all her best intentions, is doomed to her fate.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book, both in terms of style and content. I have always liked revisionist novels, that compliement the original work as they allow us to hold up a mirror to Oz's society and see there is more to the story than was first thought.
14 Apr 2007 22:37 | (0) comments | Books
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