What Does The Color Symbolize In The Wizard Of Oz

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L. Frank Baum uses colors throughout the novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." Color plays a very important role in this fairy tale. Other than playing an important role, the colors allow the audience to interpret symbolism in a different way. The colors' symbolism also gives a deeper meaning to the text itself. In this novel particularly, color is used in plenty of different ways to emphasize, interpret, symbolize, etc.

Baum was highly aware of color schemes and how they worked, he even wrote on the subject in some of his other works. When he was working on "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," Baum wrote a summary of it's principles in "The Art of Decorating Dry Goods Stores and Windows (1900)." The significance of color is reflected throughout Dorothy's whole journey, starting even before the journey did. His use of color helps shape the tale of …show more content…

The land of the Munchkins is bright blue, a thrilling color. The land of the Winkies is yellow, and the land of the Quadlings is red. The three primary colors are coordinated with the three major countries visited in Oz. As said earlier, Baum was familiar with the color theory from his days as a window dresser. He knew yellow was "west" of blue and red was more to the "south." Notice, Dorthy and her companions she meets do not travel directly from one primary color to another. Their path crosses through a secondary color first. Yellow and blue intertwined at Emerald City,which is a link between the blue land of the Munchkins and the yellow land of the Winkies. They also travel from Winkie Country to Glinda's castle in the red south. Before arriving in the Quadling Country, they pass through a brown country side which is made up of all three primary colors or mixing green with red. Baum followed the standard color wheel, putting blue to the right or to the east, yellow to the left or to the west, and red at the bottom or south, just as the countries in Oz are placed in that

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