Land of Oz
The Land of Oz is a fantasy world introduced in the 1900 children's novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz written by L. Frank Baum and illustrated by W. W. Denslow.
Oz consists of four vast quadrants: the Gillikin Country in the north, Quadling Country in the south, Munchkin Country in the east, and Winkie Country in the west. Each province has its own ruler, but the realm itself has always been ruled by a single monarch. According to Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, the ruler has mostly either been named Oz or Ozma. According to The Marvelous Land of Oz, the current monarch is Princess Ozma.
Baum did not intend for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to have any sequels, but it achieved greater popularity than any of the other fairylands he created, including the land of Merryland in Baum's children's novel Dot and Tot in Merryland, written a year later. Due to Oz's success, including a 1902 musical adaptation, Baum decided to return to it, in 1904, with The Marvelous Land of Oz. For the next 15 years, he described and expanded upon the land in the Oz Books, a series which introduced many fictional characters and creatures. Baum planned to end the series with The Emerald City of Oz, in which Oz is forever sealed off and rendered invisible to the outside world, but this was not received well by fans, and he quickly abandoned the idea, writing eight more Oz books and even naming himself the "Royal Historian of Oz".
In all, Baum wrote fourteen best-selling novels about Oz and its enchanted inhabitants, as well as a spin-off series of six early readers. After his death in 1919, publisher Reilly & Lee continued to produce annual Oz books, passing on the role of Royal Historian to author Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrator John R. Neill, and several other writers. The forty books in Reilly & Lee's Oz series are called "the Famous Forty" by fans and are considered the canonical Oz texts.
Baum characterized Oz as a real place, unlike MGM's 1939 musical movie adaptation, which presents it as a dream of lead character Dorothy Gale. According to the Oz books, it is a hidden fairyland cut off from the rest of the world by the Deadly Desert.
Characteristics
Oz is, in the first book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, distinguished from Dorothy's native Kansas by not being civilized; this explains why Kansas does not have witches and wizards, while Oz does. In the third book, Ozma of Oz, Oz is described as a "fairy country", new terminology that remained to explain its wonders.Geography
The Land of Oz
Oz is roughly rectangular in shape and divided along the diagonals into four countries: Munchkin Country in the East, Winkie Country in the West, Gillikin Country in the North, and Quadling Country in the South. In the center of Oz, where the diagonals cross, is the fabled Emerald City, capital of the land of Oz and seat to the monarch of Oz, Princess Ozma.The regions have a color scheme: blue for Munchkins, yellow for Winkies, red for Quadlings, green for the Emerald City, and purple for the Gillikins, which region was also not named in the first book. This emphasis on color is in contrast with Kansas; Baum, describing it, used "gray" nine times in four paragraphs. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, this is merely the favorite color of each quadrant, used for clothing and other man-made objects, and having some influence on their choice of crops, but the basic colors of the world are natural colors. The effect is less consistent in later works. In The Marvelous Land of Oz, the book states that everything in the land of the Gillikins is purple, including the plants and mud, and a character can see that he is leaving when the grass turns from purple to green, but it also describes pumpkins as orange and corn as green in that land. Baum, indeed, never used the color scheme consistently; in many books, he alluded to the colors to orient the characters and readers to their location and then did not refer to it again. His most common technique was to depict the man-made articles and flowers as the color of the country, leaving leaves, grass, and fruit their natural colors.
Most of these regions are settled with prosperous and contented people. However, this naturally is lacking in scope for plot. Numerous pockets throughout the Land of Oz are cut off from the main culture, for geographic or cultural reasons. Many have never heard of Ozma, making it impossible for them to acknowledge her as their rightful queen. These regions are concentrated around the edges of the country and constitute the main settings for books that are set entirely within Oz. The Lost Princess of Oz, for instance, is set entirely in rough country in Winkie Country, between two settled areas. In Glinda of Oz, Ozma speaks of her duty to discover all these stray corners of Oz.
In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a yellow brick road leads from the lands of the Munchkins to the Emerald City. Other such roads featured in other works: one from Gillikin Country in The Marvelous Land of Oz and a second one from Munchkin Land in The Patchwork Girl of Oz.
Gillikin Country
Gillikin Country is the northern part of the Land of Oz. It is the home of the Gillikins. It is distinguished by the color purple worn by most of the local inhabitants as well as the color of their surroundings.Martin Gardner suggests the name Gillikin may be named after the purple blossoms of the gillyflower. Jerry Griswold summarized Gillikin Country as "a place of mountains and lakes". In his observation of parallels between the land of Oz and the United States of America, he saw this northern part as similar to Michigan, which was familiar to L. Frank Baum from vacations.
In Gregory Maguire's revisionist Oz novels Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and Son of a Witch, the Gillikin Country is simply called 'Gillikin'. It is portrayed as more prosperous and industrially developed than other regions of Oz, and it is the home of Shiz University. Much of both of Edward Einhorn's novels, Paradox in Oz and The Living House of Oz, are set in Gillikin Country. They feature the kingdom of Tonsoria, homes to Princesses Ayala and Talia, and in Absurd City, home of the Parrot-Ox.
Quadling Country
Quadling Country is the southern part of the Land of Oz. It is the home of the Quadlings and ruled by Glinda. Michael Patrick Hearn suggests the name Quadling means "a small inhabitant of the fourth country". In Gregory Maguire's novel, Quadling country is described as a marshland that is left almost uninhabited after the conquest of the wizard.Munchkin Country
Munchkin Country is the eastern part of the Land of Oz. It is the home of the Munchkins. In the story, the novel's protagonist Dorothy Gale, attends a celebration upon her arrival to Oz at the mansion of Boq, who is the friendliest and wealthiest Munchkin man.Michael Patrick Hearn suggests the name Munchkin may have been inspired by the fabulous Baron Munchausen. He also points out that the 1961 Russian edition derives the name from the verb "to munch". Evan Schwartz suggests a reference to the Münchner Kindl. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the country was called "the land of Munchkins", but it is referred to as "Munchkin Country" in all subsequent Oz books. In the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, it is called Munchkinland.
Winkie Country
Winkie Country is the western part of the Land of Oz. It is the home of the Winkies. Michael Patrick Hearn suggests the name Winkie means "a little bit of light," referring to the country "where the sun sets".This quadrant is strictly distinguished by the color yellow. This color is worn by most of the native inhabitants called the Winkies and predominates in the local surroundings. The Winkies are relatively normal in appearance with the exception of their yellow-tinted skin. Tin abounds there and it is said that the Winkies are some of the most skillful tinsmiths in the world. This was the country once ruled by the malevolent Wicked Witch of the West before Dorothy Gale "melted" her with a bucket of water, as narrated in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. After that, the Winkies asked the Tin Woodman to be their new monarch ruler which he gladly accepted. He now lives in a vast palace made of tin that his loyal subjects built in his honor as a present for their new king.
The most famous depiction of the Winkies is in the 1939 musical film where they appear as the regimental army of the Wicked Witch of the West, marching in formation and chanting repeatedly.
In Gregory Maguire's revisionist Oz novels Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and Son of a Witch, this area is called the Vinkus, and it is revealed that "Winkie" is considered a derogatory term.
Deadly Desert
Oz is completely surrounded on all four sides by a desert which insulates the citizens of the Land of Oz from discovery and invasion. Although the desert is mundane in the first two books, in the third book, Ozma of Oz, it is described as having life-destroying sands and noxious fumes, features that remains constant for the rest of the series. In the fifth book, The Road to Oz, a sign is posted on the edge of the desert to warn travelers:ALL PERSONS ARE WARNED NOT TO VENTURE UPON THIS DESERT
For the Deadly Sands Will Turn Any Living Flesh to Dust in an Instant.
Beyond This Barrier is the
LAND OF OZ
But no one can Reach that Beautiful Country because of these Destroying Sands.
For the Deadly Sands Will Turn Any Living Flesh to Dust in an Instant.
Beyond This Barrier is the
LAND OF OZ
But no one can Reach that Beautiful Country because of these Destroying Sands.
The desert is used as a literary device to explain why Oz is essentially cut off from the rest of the world and the surrounding countries of Nonestica. No one in the Oz series is ever seen to die in the desert, but it has nonetheless been breached numerous times by children from the primary world, by the Wizard of Oz himself, and by more sinister characters such as the Nome King, who attempted to conquer Oz. After such an attempt in The Emerald City of Oz, Glinda creates a barrier of invisibility around the Land of Oz to further protect it. This was an effort on Baum's part to end the series, but the insistence of readers meant the continuation of the series and, therefore, the discovery of many ways for people to pass through this barrier as well as over the sands. Despite this continual evasion, the barrier itself remained; nowhere in any Oz book did Baum hint that the inhabitants were even considering removing the magical barrier.
The Deadly Desert is seen in Wicked and its sequel Wicked: For Good but it's renamed as "The Impassible Desert" due to its vast size and no longer has the life-destroying sands and noxious fumes. Elphaba and Fiyero are seen treking it at the end of the film after leaving Oz following their staged deaths.