FN Blog - Seven heads are better than one!

I had been so intrigued by Gregory Maguire’s books, which I would often see on display at the bookstores I frequent, that I finally gave in and got myself a copy of Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West.

Wicked is a revisionist look at the Land of Oz. In the original story by L. Frank Baum, you have Kansas girl, Dorothy, magically blown into Oz with her dog, Toto. To make a long story short, she wants to get back to Kansas, but the Wizard tells her she has to kill the Wicked Witch of the West before she can head on home. There is an obvious line drawn between good and evil, good guys and bad guys. And, in the end, good naturally triumphs.

But Maguire asks, “But what of the witch?” In his retelling, he traces the story of the witch Elphaba, the green-skinned baby born to a Unionist minister and his less-than-devoted wife. We follow Elphaba as she goes on to university, makes a few friends (including roommate Galinda, later to be known as Glinda), turns revolutionary (against the tyrannical Wizard), and—gasp!—even falls in love.

The book totally wasn’t what I expected, and at first I was slightly disappointed. I knew Wicked was turned into a successful Broadway musical, one which my friends have been raving about, and I couldn’t quite reconcile this with what I was reading. I expected an anti-fairy tale of sorts, one where there wasn’t a happily ever after, sure, but a light narrative nonetheless. Instead, I got a tome that was rife with symbolisms, one that had much greater depth than I anticipated. I was honestly looking forward to relaxing my brain with an entertaining read, not disturbing it with questions of politics, and good and evil. This was turned into a musical? I simply couldn’t imagine the actors bursting into song about the nature of evil.

I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would, but it certainly got me thinking. It’s been a couple of weeks since I finished reading it, but I’m still thinking about Elphaba’s tragic story and what it all means. In the end, yes, one may argue that she was still evil. But many of us can somehow relate to her story—of perhaps feeling like we don’t belong, of yearning to be loved, of wanting to do what we thought was right, of longing to be forgiven. Elphaba was The Wicked Witch of the West. But, as Maguire reminds us, she was also human.