The Compass
Who are the main characters in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and what happens to each one? I read L. Frank Baumβs novel, the Project Gutenberg text, and counted how often each name is used in the twenty-four chapters. Be warned, the endings are the point, so this spoils the whole book.
Here is the layout. Four directions, four countries, one city in the middle. The east is blue and belongs to the Munchkins. The west is yellow and belongs to the Winkies. The south is red and belongs to the Quadlings. The center is green, and that is the Emerald City. The text gives the Witch of the North no color that I could find.
Dorothy and Toto
Dorothy tops the table, with about three hundred and sixty-nine mentions. She is a Kansas orphan who lives with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, and the book never tells us her age. It does say she is well grown for her years.
She is polite, practical, and quick to cry, and she is braver than she looks. She slaps a lion on the nose for threatening her dog. She kills two witches, and neither on purpose. A house does the first, and a bucket of water does the second. She says there is no place like home, in chapter four. Her silver shoes and her wish to go back are the whole spine of the plot.
Toto sits just behind her, at about ninety-three mentions. The narrator notes, strange to say, that he cannot speak. He barks at the Lion, bites the Witch, and in chapter seventeen his chase after a kitten costs Dorothy her seat in the balloon.
The Scarecrow
The Scarecrow is second, at about two hundred and twenty-five. He was made two days before Dorothy meets him, so he knows nothing, and he is afraid of exactly one thing, a lighted match. He wants brains.
Here is what I notice. He is the one with the plans. His idea gets the group across the first ditch, his plan drops two Kalidahs into the gap, and his straw saves three sleepers from the bees. He is a fool only in his own opinion, and Oz tells him so. In the end he rules the Emerald City.
The Tin Woodman
The Tin Woodman comes third, at about one hundred and eighty-two. The name tin man shows up only twice, in lowercase, never as a title. He was once a flesh and blood woodcutter, in love with a Munchkin girl. The Witch of the East enchanted his axe, so it took off his legs, arms and head, one after another, and a tinsmith rebuilt each part.
He wants a heart, and what I find funny is that he is the kindest person in the book without one. He cries when he steps on a beetle, and his tears rust his jaw. He is also a fighter. He chops the heads off forty wolves with his axe, and a wildcat. At the end the Winkies ask him to rule, and he does.
The Cowardly Lion
The Lion has about one hundred and eighty-one mentions. He is huge, he roars, and he runs the moment anyone fights back. He wants courage. Yet he carries each friend across the first ditch, guards the door at night, refuses to be harnessed by the Witch, and kills a giant spider that is eating the forest animals. They make him king.
Oz
Oz has about one hundred and sixty-three mentions, and no two of them describe the same face. To Dorothy he is a giant Head. To the Scarecrow he is a Lady with wings. To the Tin Woodman he is a five-eyed Beast, and to the Lion he is a Ball of Fire. Then he is an empty room and a Voice, and finally a bald little man behind a screen.
That man is from Omaha. He was a ventriloquist, then a balloonist, and he calls himself a humbug and a bad wizard but a good man. He leaves in his balloon, and the text only says he may have reached Omaha.
The Four Witches
Now the witches. There are four, and only one of them, I would argue, ever gets to be a character.
The Wicked Witch of the East is dead before chapter two is over. Her whole presence is two feet, a pair of silver shoes, and the hold she had on the Munchkins. We learn about her later through the Tin Woodmanβs story.
The Witch of the North is a small, kind, wrinkled woman. She turns her hat into a slate, tells Dorothy where to go, and kisses her forehead. Four mentions of her title in the whole book.
The Wicked Witch of the West, eleven mentions by that name, is the villain. She has one eye that sees like a telescope, and a silver whistle for wolves, crows and bees. She is afraid of the dark and of water, and water ends her.
Glinda, the Witch of the South, has nineteen mentions, and every one is in chapters eighteen, twenty-two and twenty-three. She has red hair, a white dress, and a throne of rubies. She is the one who explains the shoes.
The Rest of the Cast
Then the helpers. The Queen of the Field Mice repays a life with a rescue, pulling the Lion out of the poppies, and later tells Dorothy about the Cap. A stork carries off the stranded Scarecrow. The Guardian of the Gates locks green spectacles on every guest. The Winged Monkeys obey whoever wears the Golden Cap, three times only, and the Monkey King explains why, with a story about a princess named Gayelette and her groom Quelala. At the end, Glinda says she will hand the Cap to the Monkey King, so his band is free for good.
Smaller encounters are worth mentioning too. Boq the Munchkin hosts Dorothy. A china Princess refuses to be carried to Kansas, because she would stiffen. A clown named Mr. Joker is mended in a hundred places.
Who Changes
Here is my reading, and it is an opinion. Nobody in this book changes. The Scarecrow acts wise before Oz stuffs his head, and the Lion acts brave before he drinks his green bottle. The Tin Woodman weeps for beetles without a heart. Oz himself says the Lion has courage already. What changes is who believes it. If this helped, subscribe, and tell me in the comments which character you would travel with.
