Wizard of Oz Parable

In the novel, play, and the movie “The Wizard of Oz,” had multiple opinions that explained the arguement on whether or not Frank Baum meant to use "The Wizard of Oz" story as a parable on the Populist movement. Ever since it was first publicated in 1900, Lyman Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has been very popular to all age groups, providing the basis for a profitable musical comedy, three movies, and a number of plays on broadway. It is an orginal creation, curiously warm and touching, although no one really knows why, despite its acceptance by generations of readers, Baum's story has been given neither critical acclaim, nor critical examinations. An interested scholar, such as Martin Gardiner, looked upon The Wizard of Oz as the first sequel in a series of Oz stories, and probably base their appreciation of Baum's talent on all of his works.

However, during this time in history, politics needed a party that had more reasoning and meaning, or hopefully more meaning than just appointing someone to run office. The populist party had thought throughly the reason behind having big businesses running the majority country. Basically they saw that the railroads, telegraph, and bank companies were running the America. For this reason they wanted the government to be in control of these major things so smaller businesses. Of course, with the low crop prices farmers were one of the major advocates of this idea, and would soon become corrupt.

Likewise Frank Baum moved to the Midwest in the height of the Populist movement and witnessed many of the hardships that the small farms withstood. Baum understood the farmers problems and supported their plead to receive government regulation on the railroads and other big businesses. Ba...

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...es became smarter and began to earn more control against the manipulative East and West coasts. Dorothy is the most important character because she shows that one person can make a difference.

Looking back on the similarities between the populist movement and Frank Baum's world famous story, there is very little doubt in my mind that Baum did not have at least had some idea of a parable on the populist movement when he wrote it. Allthough the novel is a simple children’s novel, and contains all the qualities that a typical fairy tale should have, Baum clearly had a indirect theory behind it. His family may deny the theory and there is no empirical evidence that Baum wrote the novel as a parable. However, the immense amount and accuracy of the connections still makes me a strong believer that Frank Baum wrote “The Wizard of Oz” as a parable on the populist movement.