An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that "when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre."
20
Noting the bizarre ambivalences in these passages should not be seen as trying to apologize for them. There is no meaningful apology that could be made. Certainly one can come up with explanations for how the above could have sprung from someone apparently so generous in every other respect. Baum shared a kind of jejune, romantic, all-or-nothing mentality with many Americans of the period; in those days— it seems to us— many people thought about groups first and later about individuals, and were so sold on notions like "national honor" that putting the enemy out of its misery was often seen as (almost) the liberal opinion. And certainly in terms of biography, Baum was something of a perpetual adolescent, a dabbler in everything from performing in musical comedies to chicken breeding, and at this time he was at the low point of his life, at what seemed like the end of a long slide from well-to-do boyhood to the sort of poverty he later described so unflinchingly in the first chapter of
The Wizard of Oz
. Had he witnessed or heard about some Indian barbarity that, combined with his depression, produced a statement he might have repudiated at other times in his vicissitudinous career? It doesn't look as though anyone will ever know. At any rate, the question we Ozians can't help asking ourselves— even though it's not really an intellectual question, not a question of art but one of speculative biography— is whether our knowing about Baum's "genocide editorials" should recolor our view of Oz. Have we been reading the books through emerald-tinted glasses? Is there something about Oz we've been missing? Something sinister?
So far, the usual answer would be no. In the eyes of most people who write about Oz, Baum's world is a sunny one and his outlook on life is enlightened in advance of that of his average contemporary's. Several of the planners of the Aberdeen festival, for instance, responded to a Lakota petition-and-boycott campaign by drafting an "Apology and Pledge" stressing Oz's pacifism and tolerance:
Baum's books are a sharp contrast to this call for genocide. Difference is valued in his stories; he describes groups of creatures with different characters and beliefs who work out the logistics of living together in respect and harmony. Oz is a multicultural kingdom. How could someone with such a vision have called for the mass murder of an entire group of people?
The fabric of Oz is love, the emotional connection, life-form to life-form, that creates respect, recognition, and acceptance. Baum didn't practice that with the Lakota. Instead he abstracted these people, stripped away their humanness, and turned them into a concept, a "vanishing race," thereby setting up the conditions to think them out of existence.
21
As Martin Gardner says, "this theme of tolerance runs through all of Baum's writings."
22
This is certainly true as far as it goes. But I think it's also possible to distinguish a subtheme, one that may be equally integral to Oz— not only as a foil to the books' more conscious intentions, but as a component of the fuel that powered Baum's imagination.
4. THE WOODEN GARGOYLES
As Thurber realizes, how nightmarish something is depends to a large extent on the age and impressionability of its audience. A young child, at least, listening to the Oz books before bed, can find plenty to be frightened of. Baum's work doesn't hinge on violent death, like that of Grimm or Andersen, and it has little of Carroll's chilly obscuritanism, but his creations have an eeriness of their own that I think places him closer to Poe. In
The Road to Oz
(1909), Dorothy and her companions— this time a boy named Button-Bright, a Whitcomb Riley–esque character called the Shaggy Man, and a somewhat provocative rainbow fairy named Polychrome— are surrounded by a tribe of gaudily colored figures with grotesque faces on both the fronts and backs of their detachable heads. The Shaggy Man asked them who they are:
"Scoodlers!" they yelled in chorus, their voices sharp and shrill.
"What do you want?" called the Shaggy Man.
"You!" they yelled, pointing their thin fingers at the group; and they all flopped around, so they were white, and then all flopped back again, so they were black.
"But what do you want us for?" asked the Shaggy Man, uneasily.
"Soup!" they all shouted, as if with one voice.
"Goodness me!" said Dorothy, trembling a little; "the Scoodlers must be reg'lar cannibals."
"Don't want to be soup," protested Button-Bright, beginning to cry.
"Hush, dear," said the little girl, trying to comfort him; "we don't any of us want to be soup. But don't worry; the Shaggy Man will take care of us."
"Will he?" asked Polychrome, who did not like the Scoodlers at all, and kept close to Dorothy.
"I'll try," promised the Shaggy Man; but he looked worried. Happening just then to feel the Love Magnet in his pocket, he said to the creatures, with more confidence:
"Don't you love me?"
"Yes!" they shouted, all together.
"Then you mustn't harm me, or my friends," said the Shaggy Man, firmly.
"We love you in soup!" they yelled, and in a flash turned their white sides to the front.
23
After some trouble, our friends escape the Scoodlers and then destroy them: the Shaggy Man catches their detachable heads and hurls them down a gorge "with right good will," laughing as the Scoodlers' helpless bodies stumble blindly about.
Each book in the series contains at least one or two scenes that are equally unsettling, but I think many Ozians would agree the most unnerving title is the fourth,
Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
(1908). Gardner says "an atmosphere of violence and gloom hangs over the tale"
24
and more than one critic has pointed out its affinities to Dante's
Inferno
.
25
But the book is also so purely bizarre that one is tempted to wonder whether it reflects a collision of Baum's numerous chronic illnesses with the even more varied patent medicines of the period. At the beginning of the story, Dorothy, a farm boy named Zeb, Zeb's horse Jim, Dorothy's kitten Eureka (Toto has been left at home), and the Wizard— who, since his exile from Oz in the first book, has returned to his vocation as a carnival showman— are caught in an earthquake near San Francisco and tumble through a fault line to the underground kingdom of the Mangaboos, a society of vegetable people. The Wizard gets into a magic contest with Gwig, their great "thorny Sorcerer," and when he wins greater applause for his sleight-of-hand multiplying-piglets trick than Gwig does for his own authentic magic, the Sorcerer begins to cast a spell on him:
"He will not be a wonderful Wizard long," remarked Gwig.
"Why not?" enquired the Wizard.
"I am going to stop your breath," was the reply. "I perceive that you are curiously constructed, and that if you cannot breathe you cannot keep alive."
The little man looked troubled.
"How long will it take you to stop my breath?" he asked.
"About five minutes. I'm going to begin now. Watch me carefully."
He began making queer signs and passes toward the Wizard; but the little man did not watch him long. Instead, he drew a leathern case from his pocket and took from it several sharp knives, which he joined together, one after another, until they made a long sword. By the time he had attached a handle to this sword he was having much trouble to breathe, as the charm of the Sorcerer was beginning to take effect.
So the Wizard lost no more time, but leaping forward he raised the sharp sword, whirled it once or twice around his head, and then gave a mighty stroke that cut the body of the Sorcerer exactly in two.
Dorothy screamed and expected to see a terrible sight; but as the two halves of the Sorcerer fell apart on the floor she saw that he had no bones or blood inside of him at all, and that the place where he was cut looked much like a sliced turnip or potato. (p. 37)
Fleeing from the Mangaboos, our little band is attacked by invisible bears:
The horse was plunging madly about, and two or three deep gashes appeared upon its flanks, from which the blood flowed freely.… As the little Wizard turned to follow them he felt a hot breath against his cheek and heard a low, fierce growl. At once he began stabbing at the air with his sword, and he knew that he had struck some substance because when he drew back the blade it was dripping with blood. The third time that he thrust out the weapon there was a loud roar and a fall, and suddenly at his feet appeared the form of a great red bear, which was nearly as big as the horse and much stronger and fiercer. (p. 95)
This sort of thing keys into nightmares and wonderings that strike me as endemic to young children: waking up in the night unable to breathe, imagining what might be inside your body, or feeling there are creatures about that can't be seen.
After they elude the invisible bears, Dorothy and her friends follow a path toward the surface of the earth that leads up an underground mountain, through a high tunnel in that mountain, and out through a series of archways to an ominous land:
"The Country of the Gargoyles is all wooden!" exclaimed Zeb; and so it was. The ground was sawdust and the pebbles scattered around were hard knots from trees, worn smooth in the course of time. There were odd wooden houses, with carved wooden flowers in the front yards. The tree-trunks were of course wood, but the leaves of the trees were shavings. The patches of grass were splinters of wood, and where neither grass nor sawdust showed was a solid wooden flooring. Wooden birds fluttered among the trees and wooden cows were browsing upon the wooden grass; but the most amazing things of all were the wooden people— the creatures known as Gargoyles.
These were very numerous, for the place was thickly inhabited, and a large group of the queer people clustered near, gazing sharply upon the strangers who had emerged from the long spiral stairway.
The Gargoyles were very small of stature, being less than three feet in height. Their bodies were round, their legs short and thick and their arms extraordinarily long and stout. Their heads were too big for their bodies and their faces were decidedly ugly to look upon. Some had long, curved noses and chins, small eyes and wide, grinning mouths. Others had flat noses, protruding eyes, and ears that were shaped like those of an elephant. There were many types, indeed, scarcely two being alike; but all were equally disagreeable in appearance. The tops of their heads had no hair, but were carved into a variety of fantastic shapes, some having a row of points or balls around the top, others designs resembling flowers or vegetables, and still others having squares that looked like waffles cut criss-cross on their heads. They all wore short wooden wings which were fastened to their wooden bodies by means of wooden hinges with wooden screws, and with these wings they flew swiftly and noiselessly here and there, their legs being of little use to them.
This noiseless motion was one of the most peculiar things about the Gargoyles. They made no sounds at all, either in flying or trying to speak, and they conversed mainly by means of quick signals made with their wooden fingers or lips. Neither was there any sound to be heard anywhere throughout the wooden country. The birds did not sing, nor did the cows moo; yet there was more than ordinary activity everywhere. (pp. 113–15)
The Gargoyles then abduct our heroes, carrying them "far away, over miles and miles of wooden country" until they come to a wooden city, and leave them in a doorless, windowless tower room.
There's something singular about this episode, something that seems inexplicable, a nugget of otherness that has always preyed on my mind. Why
wooden
gargoyles? In Baum's day the word "gargoyle" (related to "gurgle," which is also Dorothy's pronunciation) referred only to sculpted rainwater spouts on cathedrals and other buildings, not to the hobgoblins or succubi they were carved to resemble. Even a living gargoyle would be a new construction, let alone one made out of wood. But if the gargoyles had been simply stone ones come to life, I doubt that I would even have remembered the episode. What is it that's so frightening about their silent wooden world? And is this sort of nightmarishness an anomaly in Oz, or a key component of Baum's vision?
5. MAGIC
For nearly a century, readers and critics have tried to explain what makes Oz so powerful. The short answer, of course, would be "magic." But what is magic, or specifically, what is the characteristic magic of Oz? How were the Gargoyles created, both in Baum's literally magic fantasy world and in the magical operations of his mind? What sort of magic is most essential to Baum's vision?
In
The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature,
Brian Attebery answers this question by positing a set of "magical operations," which Baum employs to shape his world: "animation, transformation, illusion, disillusion, transportation, protection, and luck."
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This list is a good place to start, but in addition it might be helpful to focus on exactly how Baum's use of each of these types of magic differs from that of other fantasy writers. Regarding animation, for instance, one would want to mention Baum's sensitivity to the personalities of objects before they are animated, and how they retain them after they come to life. One easy example is the Patchwork Girl, who speaks in a sort of unfocused, free-associative homespun doggerel that figures, or is figured by, the patchwork quilts she is made of. Another is the Utensia episode in
