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The
Land of Oz
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Oz is roughly rectangular in shape, and divided along the diagonals into four
countries: Munchkin
Country (but commonly referred to as 'Munchkinland' in adaptations) in the
East, Winkie Country
(called "The Vinkus" in Gregory Maguire's Wicked
and its sequel Son of a
Witch) in the West, (sometimes West and East are reversed on maps of Oz,
see West and
East below) Gillikin Country in the North, and Quadling Country in
the South. In the center of Oz, where the diagonals cross, is the fabled Emerald City, capital of the
land of Oz and seat to the monarch of Oz, Princess Ozma.
The regions have a color schema: blue for Munchkins, yellow for Winkies, red
for Quadlings, green for the Emerald city, and (in works after the first) purple
for the Gillikins, which region was also not named in the first book. (This
contrasts with Kansas; Baum, describing it, used "gray" nine times in four
paragraphs.) In The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz, this is merely the favorite color, used for clothing and other
man-made objects, and having some influence on their choice of crops, but the
basic colors of the world are natural colors. The
effect is less consistent in later works. In The
Marvelous Land of Oz, the book states that everything in the land of the
Gillikins is purple, including the plants and mud, and a character can see that
he is leaving when the grass turns from purple to green, but it also describes
pumpkins as orange and corn as green in that land. Baum, indeed, never used the color schema consistently; in many books, he
alluded to the colors to orient the characters and readers to their location,
and then did not refer to it again. His most common
technique was to depict the man-made articles and flowers as the color of the
country, leaving leaves, grass, and fruit their natural colors.
Most of these regions are settled with prosperous and contented people.
However, this naturally is lacking in scope for plot. Numerous pockets
throughout the land of Oz are cut off from the main culture, for geographic or
cultural reasons. Many have never heard of Ozma, making it impossible for them
to acknowledge her as their rightful queen. These regions are concentrated
around the edges of the country, and constitute the main settings for books that
are set entirely within Oz. The Lost
Princess of Oz, for instance is set entirely in rough country in Winkie
Country, between two settled areas. In Glinda of Oz, Ozma speaks
of her duty to discover all these stray corners of Oz.
In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a yellow brick road leads from the lands of the
Munchkins to the Emerald City. Other such roads featured in other works: one
from Gillikin Country in The Marvelous Land of Oz, and a second one from
Munchkin Land in The Patchwork Girl of Oz.
Oz is completely surrounded on all four sides by a desert, which insulates
the citizens of Oz from discovery and invasion. In the first two books, this is
merely a desert, with only its extent to make it dangerous to the traveler.[16] Indeed, in The
Marvelous Land of Oz, Mombi tries to escape through it and Glinda chases her
over the sands. Still, it is the dividing land between the magic of Oz and the
outside world, and the Winged Monkeys can not obey Dorothy's command to
carry her home because it would take them outside the lands of Oz. In Ozma of Oz, it has become a
magical desert, the Deadly
Desert with life-destroying sands (no destruction is depicted in the Oz
books, unlike in the film, Return to Oz), a feature that remained
constant through the rest of the series. The
desert has nonetheless been breached numerous times, both by children from our
world (mostly harmless), by the Wizard of Oz himself, and by more sinister
characters, such as the Nome
King, who attempted to conquer Oz. After such an attempt in The Emerald
City of Oz, the book ends with Glinda creating a barrier of invisibility around the
Land of Oz, for further protection. This was, indeed,
an earnest effort on Baum's part to escape the series, but the insistence of the
readers meant the continuation of the series, and therefore the discovery of
many ways for people to pass through this barrier as well as over the sands.
Despite this continual evasion, the barrier itself remained; nowhere in any Oz
book did Baum hint that the inhabitants were even considering removing the
magical barrier.
The first known map of Oz was a glass slide used in Baum's Fairylogue and
Radio-Play traveling show, showing the blue land of the Munchkins in the
east and the yellow land of the Winkies in the west. These directions are
confirmed by the text of all of Baum's Oz books, especially the first, in which
The Wicked Witch of the East rules
over the Munchkins, and The Wicked Witch of the West rules
over the Winkies.
Like traditional western maps, the Fairylogue and Radio-Play map
showed the west on the left, and the east on the right. However, the first map
of Oz to appear in an Oz book had those directions reversed, and the compass rose adjusted
accordingly. It is believed
that this is a result of Baum copying the map from the wrong side of the glass
slide, effectively getting a mirror image of his intended map. When he realized
he was copying the slide backward, he reversed the compass rose to make the
directions correct. However, an editor at Reilly and Lee reversed the compass
rose, thinking he was fixing an error and resulting in further confusion. Most notably, this
confused Ruth Plumly Thompson, who frequently reversed directions in her own Oz
books as a result.
Another speculation stems from the original conception of Oz, which at first
appeared to be situated in an American desert. If Baum thought of the country of
the Munchkins as the nearest region to him, it would have been in the east while
he lived in Chicago, but when he moved to California, it would have be in the
west.
Modern maps of Oz are almost universally drawn with the Winkies in the west
and the Munchkins in the east, although west and east often appear reversed.
Many Oz fans believe this is the correct orientation, perhaps as a result of
Glinda's spell, which has the effect of confusing most standard compasses;
perhaps resembling its similarity to the world Alice found through
the looking glass in which everything was a mirror image; or perhaps just
reflecting the alien nature of Oz. In Robert A. Heinlein's book The Number of the Beast he
explains that Oz is on a retrograde planet, meaning that it
spins in the opposite direction of Earth so that the sun seems to rise on one's
left as one faces north. March
Laumer's The Magic Mirror of Oz attributes the changes to a character
named Till Orangespiegel attempting to turn the Land of Oz orange. Oz, like all of Baum's fantasy countries, was presented as existing as part
of the real world, albeit protected from civilization by natural barriers. Indeed, in the
first books, nothing indicated that it was not hidden in the deserts of the
United States. It
gradually acquired neighboring magical countries, often from works of Baum's
that had been independent, as Ix
from Queen Zixi of
Ix, and Mo from The
Magical Monarch of Mo.
The first of these
is Ev, introduced in Ozma of Oz.
In Tik-Tok of
Oz, Baum included maps in the endpapers which definitively situated Oz
in a continent with its neighboring countries. Oz is the largest country on the continent unofficially known as Nonestica (this name was proposed by
Robert
R. Pattrick for the whole of the countries surrounding Oz; Pattrick proposed
"Ozeria" for the whole continent, but that name is
generally unused in fan discussions), which also includes the countries of Ev,
Ix, and Mo, which has also been known as Phunniland, among others. Nonestica is,
according to the map, in the Nonestic Ocean. A fair amount of evidence in the
books point to this continent as being envisioned as somewhere in the southern
Pacific Ocean. At the opening of
Ozma of Oz, Dorothy Gale is sailing to Australia with her Uncle
Henry when she is washed overboard (in a chicken coop, with Billina the yellow hen), and lands on the shore of Ev—a
rare instance in which an outsider reaches the Oz landmass through non-magical
(or apparently non-magical) means. Palm trees grow outside the Royal
Palace in the Emerald City, and horses are not native to Oz, both points of
consistency with a South-Pacific location; illustrations and descriptions of
round-shaped and domed Ozite houses suggest a non-Western architecture.
Conversely, Oz has technological, architectural, and urban elements typical of
Europe and North America around the turn of the twentieth century; but this may
involve cultural input from unusual external sources (see History below). Ruth
Plumly Thompson asserts in her first Oz book, The Royal Book of Oz, that the
language of Oz is English, which also suggests European or American influence.
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Movies
THE
WIZARD OF OZ
RETURN
TO OZ
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