Conspiracy Theories

Wizard of Oz: The True Meaning

Popular literature frequently skirts the boundaries between truth and fiction. Many classic literary works have actually been thinly veiled allegories of contemporary or historical events, and many of the world's most famous writers of fiction such as George Orwell, Mark Twain, Upton Sinclair, and Aldous Huxley are perhaps remembered even more for the depth and quality of their social and political commentary than they are for the overall quality of their writing.

It will certainly be no surprise to anyone to hear that famous classic books such as 1984, The Jungle, or Brave New World have a much more serious purpose than just pure entertainment. But many may be surprised to learn that the most popular children's fantasy of all-time, L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz, also has a deeper meaning. This classic work of children's fiction, which in the hundred-plus years since it was written has become perhaps the most familiar fictional story in the world, is in fact a sly political satire filled with rich allegorical and metaphorical imagery that could act as an historical primer on the issues that dominated the political climate of its day.

The History of an Idea

Until 1964, it never occurred to anyone that The Wizard of Oz, which had captivated millions of children around the world in both it original literary form and on the silver screen, was anything more than a vividly imaginative work of fantasy. But it was in that year that a high school history teacher named Henry Littlefield published an article in the journal American Quarterly making the case that this well-known tale, which had been published for the first time in 1900, had been written as a parable on Populism, an influential political reform movement that flourished for a time in the latter part of the 19th century. The Populists, who mainly focused on monetary reform as a way to create more equitable economic growth and opportunity, were mainly supported by farmers, small businessmen, and other powerless groups who suffered acutely during the boom-and-bust cycles that plagued the American economy throughout the post-Civil War era. Littlefield found a number of parallels between the characters in the book and historically-significant political figures who lived during those times, and also identified themes and archetypes in the story that seemed to clearly relate to life and politics as they had been experienced in Gilded Age America.

Over the course of the next twenty-five years, as other historians and academics looked more closely at Baum's tale they became convinced that Littlefield had been right, and the idea that The Wizard of Oz was really intended as a political allegory started to enter the realm of conventional wisdom. But an important part of the allegory theory had been the idea that Baum was sympathetic to Populism, and that his choice of themes in The Wizard of Oz had been based on his agreement with their principles. But when further research revealed that this had not been the case, that Baum as a journalist and editorialist in South Dakota had in fact authored several pro- Republican pieces and had even written disparagingly about the Populists, most consigned the political allegory theory to the category of urban legend. Traditional Baum scholars had always been hostile to the idea that The Wizard of Oz was anything more than a delightful children's story, and they encouraged and cheered the apparent demise of the Baum/Populist connection.

But as it turned out, the story was far from over. As interested scholars began to look more closely at Baum's tale, they began to realize that the flaw in the original theory had been the idea that Baum had been expressing sympathy for any particular political viewpoint. In fact, it became clear after closer analysis that The Wizard of Oz had been basically skewering all of the interest groups and political ideologies that had been influential or popular at the time, including Populism, and when the book was read from this perspective, the allegorical nature of the work became all but impossible to ignore.

The Wizard of Oz as Satire – A Closer Look

To some extent, allegory and metaphor are always in the eye of the beholder, and unless an author has explicitly explained just exactly what he or she was trying to say in a particular work – and Baum never revealed his true intentions with respect to The Wizard of Oz to anyone – there will always be room for disagreement and variations in interpretation.