Wicked - It Was All About the Shoes - or Was It?

It was all about the shoes, or was it?

Evil is defined as morally bad or wrong, causing ruin, injury, or pain by the American Heritage Dictionary. For one to be evil they must possess those characteristics. It is much more easy to perceive one to be evil than to be able to prove that they actually are. For over a hundred years now the Wicked Witch of L. Frank Baum’s classic story, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, has been perceived as the epitome of the evil monstrous witch just out to get Dorothy and her shoes. Nevertheless, if it was not all about the shoes, then what was it all about? Even if someone has not seen the movie or read the book, somewhere the story of the wickedness of witches has been told to them. Was the wicked witch of the west truly evil? According to the new interpretation by Gregory Maguire that turns the world of Oz on its head from what we know, Elphaba, the “Wicked Witch of the West” was just another misunderstood character and not wicked or evil at all.

When Elphaba was born green, her mother rejected her at first and then becomes protective of her very different daughter. Later on, as a child, Elphaba finds it difficult to acclimate herself to others so she begins to use her uniqueness to her own advantage by keeping herself separated from many others. She becomes a prickly teenager and young woman quick to state her mind and comment on her surroundings as she saw them. She rejects any organized religion and did not prescribe to the normal theocracy that everyone in Oz of the day follows. Even though she goes against the grain in her own beliefs, she still helps her father in his efforts to convert the Quadlings to Unionism and goes out into the field with him. As she recounts to Fiyero, “My dear father used me- he used me as an object lesson. Looking as I did, even singing as I can- they trusted him partly as a response to the freakiness of me.” (Maguire 195)

It is during her time in Shiz that Elphaba seems to enjoy her life for a while when she is working with Dr. Dillamond for the advancement of Animals into what they felt was their rightful place in Oz society. The Wizard is working against them, trying to demote their evolutionary status as equals to humans. Dr. Dillamond, a Goat himself is researching where the distinction comes from between Animals and animals, and Elphaba is diligently working for their cause by collaborating with some of her schoolmates for research. Once while recounting her work to Boq she says, “He’s very excited. The problem I see now is getting him to stop- I think he’s on the verge of founding a whole new branch of knowledge, and every day’s findings provoke a hundred new questions.” (126). After her confrontation with the Wizard regarding Dr. Dillamond’s murder, she abandons going back to Shiz for living on her own in Emerald City. On a chance meeting some years later, she runs into Fiyero, an old school mate from the opposite side of Oz, who becomes her lover while she is in the city. Their affair is very strong and has great meaning to Elphaba; it proves that she is very capable of love and affection. “You should go away, I’m not worthy of you. I love you so much, Fiyero, you just don’t understand.”(200)

Upon her lover Fiyero’s tragic death for which she blames herself, she throws herself into a state of mourning so far that she seeks refuge in the mauntery. It is here that Elphaba pays her debt to society, that she thinks she owes, by caring for the invalids for several years. Surely, someone who is wicked and evil would not care for the sick and dying as Elphaba does at the mauntery. Once she begins to seek forgiveness from her lover’s family and sets off for Kiamo Ko, her life is firmly being planted as an outsider, not a life of wickedness. In her years at Kiamo Ko, she becomes one of the family of sorts, although no one really knows even why she is there