You have probably heard this story or its name when you were a child, I didn’t read the book but there is a lot of similarities with Alice adventure’s in Wonderland.
The main character is Dorothy, a little girl who flies away because of a hurricane. She arrives in an imaginary world and her house, which has also flown away, kills one of the witchs opposed to the wizzard of Oz. She needs to this wizzard to go back to her home. On the road to reach the wizzard, she meets a lion which needs courage, a scarecrow (used to scare the birds in the fields) which needs a brain and a lumberjack (cuting trees in the woods) who needs heart. Each one goes to the wizzard of Oz to get what he needs. This wizzard asks them to kill the others whitch opposed to him and helps the three Dorothy’s companions but not her ; the wizzard flies away in an airship and another whitch (a kind whitch this time!), that helps her to go back home.
This story seems strange as much as Alice in Wonderland, we can recognize many similarities between both story, but if Alice is only a story for child, The Wonderful wizzard of Oz is indeed a metaphor of the economic situation at the end of the 19th century, in the United States. There is a great depression and each characters of this story represents a political party or an economic agent of the United States society at this time ( for instance, the scarecrow symbolises the farmers, the lumberjack represents the workers and the travel of Dorothy represents the misadventures of a normal citizen ).
I didn’t read the book either but i watched the movie directed in 1939 ( with Judy Garland and the song « over the rainbow » : a masterpiece). I find it’s more interesting and appealing than « alice’s adventures in wonderland »!
I know the story of the wonderful Wizard of Oz! It’s a good story, but I think that Alice in Wonderland it’s better than it!
It was a long time that I hear about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz! I never read and watch neither the book, nor the film. But I know, of course, the famous music of the film ( from 1939), Somewhere over the rainbow whose the lyrics are poetic enough.
I saw the adaptation of Victor Fleming directed in 1939, like Colyne. In my childhood, that was one of my favorite films. I didn’t see this movie : some of my friends didn’t like it and I was afraid to be disappointed. But the world of Oz is really incredible and remembers us the world of Wonderland as you said.
I’ve never read the book or seen the movie but your post had give to me the desire to read the book.