I’ve fallen behind a bit on reviewing the Oz books, but I have been keeping up with the monthly reading. The Tin Woodman of Oz and The Magic of Oz are the 12th and 13th books in the series. They are not among my favorites. As a child I didn’t realize how ill Baum was at the time he was writing these, and they fared better as I read them with that understanding.
Before discussing these two books, and moving on to the final book in the series, I want to take a moment to discuss the Ozathon. This was the brainchild of Lory at Entering the Enchanted Castle, and it’s been a wonderful way to re-experience the books and think about each one, how they relate to each other and to Baum’s life. I now have a much better understanding of Baum’s life and his ideas, including how his movement around the U.S. influenced his stories. He was ahead of his time in many ways, in part thanks to his wife and mother-in-law, but his work was not without problematic racial references. I’d never really thought about these books as critically as I did this year. Happily, knowing more about Baum hasn’t in any way detracted from the wonder I felt for his books as a child.
In The Tin Woodman of Oz, Nick Chopper meets another man of tin, the Tin Soldier. The two recount how they became made of tin and they realize they both loved, and abandoned, the same woman, Nimmie Amee. Because they didn’t have hearts, they could no longer love, and both rusted in the rain and never went home. They meet a boy named Woot the Wanderer, who suggests they find her and see if she still wants them.
Baum doesn’t deal with romantic relationships very often in the world of Oz, and I didn’t care for the story as a child. The idea that this woman might still be pining away for these two men who abandoned her didn’t sit right with me. Reading it as an adult, though, I can see that Baum thought the idea was ridiculous too, and he’s gently poking fun at their quest throughout the book.
This is a book full of hapless men and strong, somewhat terrifying women. Not only does Amee turn out to be very tough, but Baum introduces a character I found absolutely terrifying, Mrs. Yoop. She’s not just a giant, but a smart and powerful magician. Not only is she able to transform and imprison the characters, but she’s even able to influence their thinking – she says she can make them contented with being imprisoned.
The other disturbing part of the book is the character of Chopfyt, a man who is made up of the body parts discarded by the Tin Woodman and the Tin Soldier. The Tin Men raise the existential question of whether they are more than the sum of their parts, so to speak. Is it okay that their body parts were used to create another person? Baum often raises disturbing ideas in his books, and this is a thought-provoking one although I wasn’t sad to see the last of Chopfyt and this storyline.
The Magic of Oz has a cohesive storyline, but it lacks the wonder of some of the Oz books, as well as the tension. Kiki Aru is a sullen Munchkin boy who stumbles across a powerful spell – with just a word he can transform himself or the people around him into anything he wants. He’s exploring this new power when he runs into Ruggedo, the deposed Nome King. Ruggedo still thirsts for revenge and wants to use this power to take over Oz.
Fortunately, the execution of the plan doesn’t go so well, considering that Kiki Aru could turn all the powerful people of Oz into tree branches if he wanted to. Their idea is to build an army out of the animals of the forest, but their plan assumes that the animals trust them (they don’t) and that they want to live in a palace in Oz.
Baum is typically really good at building out his stories with a good amount of tension, drama, and magic (Rinkitink and Lost Princess are good examples). In this book, it just felt like he resolved the primary conflict much too early and too easily, and the rest of the book felt like filler. He spends more time on Ozma’s birthday than on this possible takeover of Oz and transformation of all its inhabitants.
Baum tended to reuse plot points, which sometimes seems a bit lazy but I think also builds consistency across his books. In Magic of Oz, the villains are defeated when they are turned into nuts and pocketed by the Wizard (in The Lost Princess of Oz, Ozma is hidden inside a peach pit) and the final resolution comes from the characters drinking from the Water of Oblivion (a throwback to The Emerald City of Oz). As a child it felt comforting to see these common threads. Now, I realize Baum was under enormous pressure to complete Oz books annually so recycling some ideas seems understandable.
The last book written by Baum, Glinda of Oz, is one of my favorites, and I’m looking forward to re-reading it. I think I’d like to explore some of Baum’s non-Oz works after that. You can find Lory’s discussion of The Magic of Oz and Glinda of Oz here. Thanks for following along on our journey through Oz!
