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Yellow Brick Politics?

© Karen Barker Crowley

What does The Wizard of Oz have to do with politics? Oz experts and fans have debated this question for nearly 40 years.

In 1964, high-school teacher Henry Littlefield published an article in The American Quarterly claiming that Oz author L. Frank Baum meant the book to be a political allegory. The story's characters and events, wrote Littlefield, all symbolize different aspects of the turn-of-the-century Populist movement in the United States.

During the presidential election of 1896, candidate William Jennings Bryan's platform "rested mainly on the issue of adding silver to the nation's gold standard," wrote Littlefield. Therefore, under Littlefield's theory, Dorothy's shoes - which were silver, not ruby, in the book - represented the free coinage of silver; the Yellow Brick Road represented the gold standard.

According to Littlefield, Dorothy herself represents the everyday American: "She is one of us," wrote Littlefield, "levelheaded and human." The Tin Woodman represents the American worker, the Scarecrow the American farmer, and the Cowardly Lion symbolizes William Jennings Bryan himself.

"The King of Beasts is not after all very cowardly," wrote Littlefield, "and Bryan, although a pacifist and an anti-imperialist in a time of national expansion, is not either."

Littlefield's list of symbolism goes on: The Emerald City represented Washington, D.C., and the Wizard, "a little bumbling old man, hiding behind a façade of paper mache and noise, might be any president from Grant to McKinley."

The Wicked Witch of the West represents the untamed, drought-plagued western plains, killed only by a bucket of water. The Winged Monkeys, who tell Dorothy, "Once we were a free people, living happily in the great forest ... doing just as we pleased without calling anybody master. This was many years ago, long before Oz came out of the clouds to rule over this land", represent Native Americans.

The theory sounds convincing, but is it true? It soon became widely publicized, misunderstood, embellished, and accepted as the truth, when, in fact, there is little historical evidence to back it up. There is absolutely no proof that Baum added symbolism to his story intentionally; in fact, in 1992, Littlefield wrote another article for The International Wizard of Oz club's publication, The Baum Bugle, explaining that he and his students made up the theory themselves for a summer-school class.

Oz expert Eric P. Gjovaag, who maintains an extensive list of frequently asked Oz questions on his web site, answers the political allegory question in detail. Gjovaag points out that Baum was not active in politics, that none of his other stories could be considered political works, and the few political newspaper columns he did write leaned more toward the Republicans than the Populists.

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