Essay Questions

Is Elphaba wicked?

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? The big question that the whole novel revolves around. And, of course, it goes without saying, natural enough, that, well, only each reader can really answer that question satisfactorily. The short answer is, however, no but that no comes with a very big but. And the big but of the answer is that Elphaba is not wicked—but—who is to say for another what it really means to be wicked. Some will read this version of the tale of life in Oz and shake their head vehemently at the very suggestion that Elphaba is really a wicked witch. The villain in this version is quite clearly the Wizard, but, then, isn’t the Wizard also the villain of the most famous film adaptation of this story?

True enough, Maguire’s Wizard takes villainy to a whole different level than the 1939 musical film, but once it is revealed that the Wizard is just a little con man operating smoke and mirrors from behind his curtain, the Wicked Witch ceases to be the villain. If, indeed, she ever really was. After all, close scrutiny reveals that is Glinda the Good Witch who is actually the cause of all of Dorothy’s woe. In fact, if one is to be honest about it, the Wicked Witch of the West in the film is actually less wicked than Elphaba to a certain extent. But that mean the answer to the question posed above is unqualified affirmative? Not for at least one reader, it doesn’t.

Elphaba is radicalized politically as a result of her defense of Animal rights. What connects Elphaba so strongly to the Animals

Firstly, one must understand that Animals are quite different from animals in the novel. Elphaba is radicalized not because she is some sort of PETA-activist no matter how much some analysis desperately wants to make the story more literal than is logical. Elphaba’s support is for Animals with the capital “A” which are beastly only in physical biology. They are animals invested with the higher intellect of human beings and the whole point of Elphaba’s radicalization is that with the onset of the Wizard’s fascism government, they are not treated as being equal to humans but rather on the basis of their anatomical features.

One of the most significant quotes in the novel is one which viscerally makes the connection between Elphaba and Animals concrete: "Elphaba looked like something between an animal and an Animal, like something more than life but not quite Life.” Because of her green skin she is routinely treated with discriminatory expectations as being almost but not quite human just as Animals are almost but not quite humans. This is the link which drivers her radicalization and it is her radicalization which drives her toward blithely accepting the mantle of Wicked Witch.