Recently I spent ten days working backstage for the national tour of The Wizard of Oz. This afternoon, as an act of mourning, celebration, and education, I read the book on which the musical and movie were based–The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum–for the first time. And whereas the musical and movie contain much of the original story, they leave many notable details out.

Prepare yourself for a rather long (but entertaining) book report.

According to the Baum, Aunt Em never smiles, and she, Uncle Henry, and Dorothy (and Toto) are the only characters who live in Kansas. (Later we find out that the wizard is from Omaha, Nebraska.) There’s no mention of the three farmhands–Hunk, Hickory, and Zeke–nor is there any mention of Miss Gulch, and Dorothy never runs away or encounters Professor Marvel.

When Dorothy is swept up by the tornado and lands in Munchkin Land, she finds out that the land of Oz is divided into four sections–the east, where she’s landed, where the Munchkins live, and that used to be ruled by The Wicked Witch of the East; the west, ruled by The Wicked Witch of the West; the north, ruled by The (nameless) Witch of the North; and the south, whose details we find out later. The City of Emeralds (or The Emerald City) is in the center of all four lands. The Yellow Brick Road goes from the east to The Emerald City, and there’s NO ROAD that goes to the west.

At this point in the story, The Wicked Witch of the West does NOT appear in Munchkin Land, but Dorothy does receive a pair of magical shoes from The Witch of the North, the shoes that used to belong to The Wicked Witch of the East. However, these shoes are silver, NOT ruby, and it’s only at a later point–when Dorothy changes from a red dress into her famous blue and white gingham dress–that she puts the shoes ON. The dress, which she’s brought (in her house) from Kansas is significant because all the Munchkins wear blue and believe that anyone who wears white is a sorceress. So (like Jesus), they see Dorothy as both one of them (or human) and divine.

As we all are.

As Dorothy sets off to see the Wizard–who’s referred to as The Great and Terrible, NOT The Great and Powerful–she quickly encounters The Scarecrow, The Tin Woodman, and The Cowardly Lion, much like she does in the musical and movie. Baum describes The Scarecrow–who’s supposed to have no brain–as saying things “thoughtfully” or “after some serious thought.” At first I judged these descriptions as either poor writing or pure irony, but one could argue that they are neither, as all the main characters clearly possessed that which they were seeking the whole time but simply didn’t realize it yet.

As we all do.

Another interesting point the book makes is that just as The Scarecrow didn’t have a brain (or a heart), The Tin Woodman didn’t have a heart (or a brain). But, for different reasons, one values the head above the heart, and the other values the heart above the brain, so each seeks what is important to him even though both things are “missing.” Personally, I think one should have, value, and use both their brain AND their heart.

In the scene in which Dorothy, The Scarecrow, and The Tin Woodman encounter The Cowardly Lion, the lion asks if Toto is made of straw or tin. Neither, Dorothy says, he’s “a meat dog.”

Before reaching The Emerald City, Dorothy and her friends encounter a number of trials, none of which have anything to do with The Wicked Witch of the West. Like in the musical and movie, one of these trials is the poisonous poppy field, where they initially have to leave the lion–who falls asleep–but later come back to save him. (They haul him out on a cart made by The Tin Woodman and are assisted in pulling it by hundreds of field mice.) When they do reach The Emerald City, they are required to wear green spectacles, which they are told is to protect their eyes from all the shiny objects and is something everyone has to do. Later, when it’s found out that the wizard is a fraud (“a humbug”), they’re told the spectacles are used to fool both the citizens and visitors into believing that everything is green even though in reality it’s not.

The book says that Dorothy and her friends get to see the wizard, but they have to do it separately. The wizard appears in a different form to each one, but asks them all to do the same thing–kill The Wicked Witch of the West. (Because he’s not really a wizard, he’s a afraid of her.) In the musical and movie, he asks that they bring him her broomstick, but the broomstick isn’t mentioned in the book at all–because, like Mary Poppins, the witch carries AN UMBRELLA!

Also, in the book, the witch has ONE EYE instead of two.

So Dorothy and the gang take off a-witch-hunting, but by this point, the one-eyed witch has found out about them, so she sends 40 wolves to have their asses for dinner. (The Tin Woodman chops their heads off.) Then she sends 40 crows. (The Scarecrow breaks their necks.) Then she sends a swarm of bees. (They break their stingers on The Tin Woodman’s chest.) Then she sends 12 Winkies, which are yellow, by the way, the same way the Munchkins are “blue.” (The Lion scares The Winkies off.) Finally, the witch sends the winged monkeys, whom she controls by means of a golden cap. The caveat–whoever has the golden cap can only command the monkeys three times, and this is the witch’s final “wish.”

But the monkeys succeed. (In the musical, a creature called The Jitterbug causes the main characters to dance until they are exhausted, at which point the flying monkeys scoop them up. The Jitterbug scene was shot for the 1939 movie–during the peak of the Lindy Hop/swing dance/jitterbug era–but was ultimately edited out.)

In the book, it’s only Dorothy and the lion who are brought to the witch’s castle; the other two friends are left in the woods to be rescued later. And whereas the lion is kept outside to starve to death (Dorothy saves him by sneaking him food each day), Dorothy is kept in “the house” to do dishes, much like Cinderella was. Of course, what the witch really wants is Dorothy’s shoes, and when she finally manages to steal ONE of them but not the other, Dorothy gets pissed off and throws a bucket of water on her, and it’s then that the witch both melts and dies.

And Dorothy gets her other shoe back.

At this point, Dorothy and the lion rescue their two lost friends, and since Dorothy has taken the golden cap from the witch, the four of them (and Toto) are ultimately transported back to The Emerald City by the winged monkeys. (These guys are better than Uber.) From here, the storyline pretty much follows the musical and movie, except that when the wizard takes off in the hot air balloon, The Witch of the North DOES NOT show up to save the day. Rather, our heroes are forced to take off on more adventures, and this time they go in search of The Witch of the South–Glinda–who lives in a land where everything is RED and sits on a throne made of RUBIES.

MGM (who made the movie) obviously COMBINED The Witch of the North with The Witch of the South.

Nowhere in the book (that I remember) is the phrase “lions and tigers and bears–oh my!” used. However, while the four friends are going south in search of Glinda, the come upon a land where everyone and everything is made of china (The Dainty China Country), and each of the characters except the lion says, “Oh my!”

Once the four travelers reach Glinda, she indeed teaches Dorothy how to use her magical shoes in order to get back home. But first she uses the golden cap, which Dorothy gives her in exchange for her help, to call three times upon the winged monkeys ato The Scarecrow back to rule The Emerald City (as the wizard asked him to do when he left in the hot air balloon), The Tin Woodman back to rule The Winkies in the west, and The (no-longer) Cowardly Lion back to rule a particular forest.

So Dorothy clicks her heels together three times and is whisked (in three steps) across “the desert” and back home to Kansas. (The shoes fall off her feet along the way.) However, during this whole ordeal, she never says, “There’s no place like home.” She does that earlier, when she meets The Scarecrow, who says he doesn’t understand why Dorothy would want to go back to dull, drab Kansas instead of staying in colorful Oz. “This is because you have no brains,” she says. “There’s no place like home.”

In the musical and movie, it’s strongly indicated that Dorothy was stuck unconscious by the tornado and has simply dreamt her adventures. But in the book, Dorothy comes running up to the farm, and Aunt Em says, “Where in the world have you come from?” Dorothy replies, “From the Land of Oz. … I’m so glad to be at home again!” And that’s it–THE END. Nothing is said about the tornado or the fact that Dorothy used their house as an airplane to go on vacation but didn’t bother to bring it back.

So that’s CoCo’s Cliff Notes for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. But before closing, since I’m so fascinated by the symbology of this story, here a few final things that stood out to me in the book that didn’t stand out to me in the musical or movie:

1. On going into the forest

Joseph Campbell says, “You enter the forest at the darkest point, where there is no path. Where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s path; you are not on your own path. If you follow someone else’s way, you are not going to realize your potential.” So I think it’s appropriate that there’s NO ROAD to The Wicked Witch of the West. Like Campbell says of all true heroes, Dorothy and her friends must blaze their own trail.

Symbolically speaking, the forest Dorothy and her friends enter en route to The Wicked Witch represents Dorothy’s unconscious, and The Wicked Witch represents her shadow. (It’s all the same.) The Guardian of the Gates of The Emerald City is the one who says there is NO ROAD to The Wicked Witch and explains WHY this is the case–because “no one ever wishes to go that way.” Exactly, no one WANTS to face their shadow. Why would they? It’s dark, dangerous, and scary as hell. But it is–ultimately–the way home. As the saying goes, “The only way out–is in.”

Along the same lines, Caroline Myss says, “Always go with the choice that scares you the most–because that’s the one that’s going to require the most from you.”

2. On recognizing your own power

When The Wicked Witch enslaves Dorothy, she KNOWS that Dorothy could use her silver slippers to escape if she only knew what to do with them. But she explains, “I can still make her my slave, for she does not know how to use her power.” I think this is a gorgeous lesson, the perfect reminder that we are all more capable than we recognize; it’s just a matter of learning how to rise above rather than be intimated by that which at first blush seems scary. Jesus obviously knew how to do this–he slept through a storm, walked on water, and danced on his way to the cross. The reason they called him Master? Because it’s not easy.

But it is possible.

3. On being wonderful

When Glinda is preparing to send The Scarecrow back to rule The Emerald City, she says it’s because “it would be a shame to deprive the people of so wonderful a ruler,” and The Scarecrow says, “Am I really wonderful?

Glinda’s reply?

“You are unusual.”

Oh the shade! (Shade is when you insult someone discreetly, Mom.)

But seriously. Perhaps these two things–being wonderful and being unusual–go hand in hand. I don’t know–we so often want to be like everyone else. But the truth is, we are ALL unusual. For all our similarities, there will never be another YOU or another ME–ever, ever, ever. So why not own and celebrate our differences? Don’t they make us wonderful?

Don’t they make us FULL of wonder?