Weekly Reflection #7

Wicked, The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
Gregory Maguire
pg. 136-152

Just to sum up my reading to date, I finished Ivan Denisovich quite a while ago and have put Time Travelers Wife to the side for now. Friday I spent my reading time on wicked. One thing that I love about this book is the way that it discusses everything. Since oz is a fake world that only lives in our minds, Maguire had the freedom to talk about anything he wished. Such controversial topics as religion and politics can and are discussed in a light that you never see them placed in, but this is done in a way that doesn’t offend. Maguire created three religions that the people of oz follow or don’t. One of these is based off a fairy that left oz devastated a long time ago, one is based off of witch craft, and one is the same as the first except, instead of saying a fairy with a name, it’s the “unnamed god”. These are the basic beliefs in oz and can be discussed in a light hearted manner, joked about, or enforced by different characters in this book without offending a reader of any belief system.

                Although these religions created in this book have much to do with faith, they all have their political place as well. Story’s told with each religion have a way of placing everyone in a certain social category. There is a strong fight throughout this book about animals with conscious minds just like ours holding onto the basic human rights. Each religion has a way of explaining how these Animals came to be, the religion based on witch craft (the pleasure faith) believes that it was a strong spell cast long ago that gave these Animals the ability to speak and think. This is a problem because it places the Animals as the lowest of the social classes (come to think about it all of the religions do this), but it means that the spell could be reversed, and resort the Animals back to being farm animals. The other religions have a demeaning sort of baptism that killed many animals and the ones that survived got the ability to think and speak. Although these baptisms happened supposedly before mankind existed, it still had everyone thinking of Animals as scum. All of this would be controversial and there would be much outrage if Maguire hadn’t made the religions and politics seem so outrageous, that finding any link back to your own belief system is only a mere coincidence. This was quite tactful and I really admire the thought put into making links to the real world, while reminding us that this is oz he's talking about.