The Emerald City of Oz

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The Emerald City of Oz
First edition design
AuthorL. Frank Baum
IllustratorJohn R. Neill
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SeriesThe Oz Books
GenreChildren's novel
PublisherReilly & Britton
Publication date
1910
Media typePrint (hardcover)
Preceded byThe Road to Oz 
Followed byThe Patchwork Girl of Oz 

The Emerald City of Oz is the sixth of L. Frank Baum's fourteen Oz books. Originally published on July 20, 1910, it is the story of Dorothy Gale and her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em coming to live in Oz permanently. While they are toured through the Quadling Country, the Nome King is assembling allies for an invasion of Oz. This is the first time in the Oz series that Baum made use of double plots for one of the books.[1]

Baum had intended to cease writing Oz stories with this book, but financial pressures prompted him to write and publish The Patchwork Girl of Oz three years later, with seven other Oz books to follow.[2]

Plot summary

At the beginning of this story, it is made quite clear that

Uncle Henry
. Neither of them believes a word of her stories, but consider her a dreamer, as her dead mother had been. She is undeterred.

Later, it is revealed that the destruction of their farmhouse by the tornado back in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has left Uncle Henry in terrible debt. In order to pay it, he has taken out a mortgage on his farm. If he cannot repay his creditors, they will seize the farm, thus leaving Henry and his family homeless. He is not too afraid for himself, but both he and his wife, Aunt Em, fear very much for their niece's future. Upon learning this, Dorothy quickly arranges with Princess Ozma to let her bring her guardians to Oz where they will be happier and forever safe. Using the Magic Belt (a tool captured from the jealous Nome King Roquat), Ozma transports them to her throne room. They are given rooms to live in and luxuries to enjoy, including a vast and complex wardrobe, and meet with many of Dorothy's old friends, including the Cowardly Lion and Billina the Yellow Hen.

In the underground

Nonestica
.

Dorothy, accompanied by the Wizard of Oz and several other friends, departs the Emerald City in a carriage drawn by the Wooden

Sawhorse
, intending to give her aunt and uncle a tour of the land.

The Nome General Guph visits three nations: the Whimsies, the Growleywogs and the diabolical Phanfasms of Phantastico. Having learned of this through Ozma's omniscient

Magic Picture, the people of Oz become worried. As the Nomes dig a tunnel for the combined armies to get under the Deadly Desert to the heart of the Emerald City, Ozma uses her Magic Belt to wish for a large amount of dust to appear in the tunnel. Upon emerging, the Nome King's allies therefore drink thirstily from the nearby Fountain of Oblivion
, whose waters make them forget their evil plans. The Nome King himself avoids the drink, but is thrown into the fountain by the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, which erases his memory too.

Ozma uses the Magic Belt to send the Nome King and his allies back to their respective lands. To forestall a future invasion of Oz,

Glinda the Good Witch
uses a magic charm to render Oz invisible and unreachable to everyone except those within the land itself.

Commentary

The Emerald City of Oz contains more material on the social organization of Oz than most of the earlier books, and as a consequence has attracted commentary on its Utopian aspects.

feminist utopia Herland (novel) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Today probably best known for The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman was, like Baum, a newspaper editor who used her publication as a platform for social reform. The literary connection between Gilman and Baum is thought to be another campaigning newspaper editor, Matilda Joslyn Gage, the women's rights activist who happened to be the mother of Baum's wife, Maud Gage Baum.[5] Sally Roesch Wagner of The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation published The Wonderful Mother of Oz describing how Matilda Gage's feminist politics were sympathetically channeled by her son-in-law into his Oz books.[6]

Wicked and Son of a Witch, has written that The Emerald City of Oz "is suffused with an elegiac quality" and compares its tone with that of The Last Battle, the final volume of C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.[7]

The Forbidden Fountain that Baum introduces in this book recurs in ensuing Oz books, by him and by his various successors. The Fountain is an important feature in The Magic of Oz (1919), The Forbidden Fountain of Oz (1980), The Wicked Witch of Oz (1993), and Paradox in Oz (1999).

Adaptations

The 1986 Japanese animated series Oz no Mahōtsukai included the story. It was later shortened and edited into a single feature for US video and DVD release.

In popular culture

In the 2004 movie Blade: Trinity, Sommerfield is shown reading a Braille copy of the book to her daughter Zoe, including a short description of the Nome King and how he had "never tried to be good". Later in the movie, Zoe is confronted by the film's main antagonist, Drake, and initially guesses that he is the Nome King.

Footnotes

  1. ISBN 0-7006-0832-X
    .
  2. ISBN 0-380-86553-X
  3. ISBN 0-415-92151-1
  4. ^ Katharine M. Rogers, L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz, New York, St. Martin's Press, 2002; pp. 168–72.
  5. S2CID 149563492
    .
  6. ^ Wagner, Sally Roesch. The Wonderful Mother of Oz. Fayetteville, NY: The Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, 2003.
  7. ISBN 0-8129-7494-8
    ..

External links

Wikisource has the complete text of:
The Oz books
Previous book:
The Road to Oz 		The Emerald City of Oz
1910 		Next book:
The Patchwork Girl of Oz


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