The Musical is the "Disney" version of Elphaba's life. The book is the "HBO" version

For those less empowered by the system, I can see why you would be less likely to believe in free will. The closer to the top you are, the more choices, ergo free will, you have the privilege to have.

In the book, Elphaba begins to recognize that she’s a character in a book which is why she (arguably correctly) feels like she has no agency. It’s also why she fears water: because water melts paper, which her existence as a book character is dependent on. It can be read as a very meta commentary on whether created characters can have agency, and what protections should be afforded them. This is arguably even more relevant today with all the capabilities of AI.

I personally think the reason the wizard wants to marginalize Animals is because he comes from a world where animals don’t talk and the fact they can talk and be like people makes him uncomfortable.

I once read this book in an Oz-themed class and someone described it as Maguire using a thesaurus every a paragraph and it couldn’t be any more accurate.

Good video. In the book you start to get annoyed with Elphaba because she won't take full responsibility for her gifts and her place in the world and fully try to change things. Then her time gets cut short (accidentally) by Dorothy. It ends up being a tragedy, but also a story about how even a failed revolutionary can live on in popular conciousness.

Oh what a delightful surprise. I've adored the book since high school, so it's lovely to see one my favorite literary youtubers cover it, especially since so many only focus on how totally messed up it is, rather than its actual themes as a work.

My toxic trait is that I agree with Elphaba. And honestly I resonate with her story so much. I grew up not being able to say “no” without consequences. And so now, as a means to cope with the bad things that happen to me without any warrant or consent(meaning I did the right thing to fix or prevent whatever happened from happening and it still happened), I simply let go. I no longer take accountability for what happens next. I’m sure that’s why Elphaba so suddenly decided to give up the grimoire to Glinda in the end. She already tried to fix the corrupt system and regime of Oz the right way, then she deflected and tried it her own way. Neither worked, and so she simply gave up. She might’ve not agreed with or understood Glinda’s views but she at least trusted Glinda’s judgement since Glinda is the person the understands her the most. Hoping the same Glinda that stood up for Elphaba in the ballroom will use her empathy powers to make positive change, now that Glinda witnessed how actual wickedness can affect and INFECT a person.

So awesome to see someone in this landscape talking about the original Wicked book! This was the book that at 10 year old totally changed my view on what reading was. Before Wicked I did read only as a chore. Afterwards I began to read for pleasure. So I’m biased, this book was seminal for me. It held such darkness and magic, and at 10 so much was obscured to me, but that just made my experience richer.

After the line from Nanny that you cited, she actually goes on to say something along the lines of, “Or maybe the green girl chose her own skin color, her own gender, and to hell with her parents and anybody else.” Elphie’s biggest tragedy is that she was BORN someone with the desire to fight oppression and choose for herself. She was a true individual from hour zero, and fell into a political environment where everything was about control. She spiraled down and down when, increasingly, society tried to control her. It’s why her dream at the end of the events of City of Emeralds was to retire from the world. Presumably where she could affect nothing and no one could control her. At that point it seemed that she wasn’t only sick of others’ control of her, she was also sick of trying to control anything—the fate of the Animals, the fate of her lovers and friends, so on.

Loved this video! It made me nostalgic to think on the themes of this book again.

I saw someone say the musical (in terms of tone and whats changed from the novel) is a Galinda-fied version of the book, and honestly that's why I prefer the book despite enjoying the musical. There's just so much sanded down and so much Disneyfied "glamour" from the musical that wound up adapting a genuinely challenging and at times outright unpleasant story. But that unpleasantness was intentional and so much more fascinating and enjoyable to me.

very happy to see the book get its flowers. I kind of hate the disdain it gets from some people. It was written by an english professor and thus needs to be approached as such- as a book worthy analysis.

A Lion Among Men can honestly be read as a standalone novel. It's about the Cowardly Lion and his life before and after Dorothy's arrival. He also marries Ilianora (daughter of Elphaba's lover Fiyero) and it's a strange but wholesome relationship (there's no bestiality simply because the Lion's not into her like that plus she sewed her vagina shut).

14:10 "Did you mean that ironically?" Is still a good comeback.

“The truest art is change” gonna be thinking about this for a while

I just watched this today after finishing my reread; it helped cohere my thoughts and so I’ve written them down. Sorry if it’s TL;DR!

Elphaba has a hard time with the idea of Dorothy’s goodness, because it’s so externally imposed, and then placed in opposition to her. On top of everything else that’s gone on in the book up to this point, which has affected her ability to see good in people in general. Dorothy’s arrival and accidental killing of her sister is the cherry topping/catalyst for a meltdown in more ways than one.

Elphaba is grieving, and she just asked for her sister’s personal effects; not only did Glinda give them away, she was colluding with the Wizard to re-annex Munchkinland. Both she and Boq speak of Dorothy so protectively, in a way that invalidates Elphaba’s feelings, and imply Elphaba will wrong her even before Elphaba ever thinks to harm her. Dorothy’s seen as a savior, thanks to the accident of her acceptable looks and killing of a hated figure; Elphaba was a beast due to her looks. The Wizard sees Elphaba as like any other political threat to be wary of, but Dorothy he sees as a sign, recognizing her origins in a way he won’t do with Elphaba until after she’s dead.

Elphaba is like Dorothy but also not, and then Dorothy ends up wanting the same thing she does? From her?  

(I can’t forget Nor. Nor is molded into a slave and a pawn, which is more cruel than what was done to Morrible’s students, but the Wizard and Elphie both see the comparison. Elphaba thinks Dorothy is a pawn too, but she ends up her own agent, despite others trying to use her. And the Wizard’s soldiers are willing to take sexual advantage of ten-year old Nor, but one soldier gets himself castrated and killed by the rest for suggesting they rape Dorothy. Dorothy isn’t truly any better than young Elphaba or Nor, but being randomly—or being destined, who knows—declared good protects her.)

As an atheist myself, I tend to agree with Elphaba’s articulated views on religion, but I think the concepts entangled in it—soul/self, forgiveness, duty, destiny, good and evil—are deeply important to how she sees herself in the world, and how she sees her ability to make choices.

Her choices were so limited, and yet she did have them. But someone who was never forgiven, seen as a symbol of wickedness and her parents’ failures, can’t imagine forgiving herself—whether for the personal tragedies (Fiyero) or the obligations she and others thrust upon her (Nessarose, Fiyero’s family, Animal rights, the whole notion that she should withdraw from the world so she can’t do harm). She spent her life driven by obligation and denial of herself (soul, interiority), so the choices she did make were either from that sense of obligation or from pure emotion.

She’s subsumed in her guise as terrorist, then as witch, and people don’t see her anymore, if they ever did at all. Except Glinda and Boq, maybe, but they don’t know what’s happened and they’re divided by politics and distrust. Nastoya could see her, but they were too late in reaching for each other’s help. (Fiyero saw her, she revealed herself there, and we see how that panned out.)

If she could have forgiven herself, she could have moved on, built new relationships maybe, worked with the political allies she did finally have in the West. Hey, maybe she could even have found a way to work with Nessa on her own terms. But she never felt allowed that choice, because she could never envision it. She thought forgiveness had to come from the people who, purposefully or not, condemned her. Or that redemption would come from fulfilling her obligations, to at least make her losses and sacrifice worth it; that’s why she needed an A in being an opponent to Morrible and the Wizard towards the end of the book.

This is what the religious aspect is so intertwined with; Elphaba the atheist may be a genuine skeptic about the idea of divine entities looking out for people, but her belief that she doesn’t have a soul is tied to an open wound, the belief that she’s not a person (someone who can love and need and have relationships like anyone else), and that she has to justify her existence by surrendering it to a cause.

It left her desperately flailing for anything. Begging for Nor’s life. Trying to kill Madame Morrible. Needing proof that she was seen as a threat (even though the Wizard already confirmed that he saw her as one!) The whole fantasy that Fiyero was a scarecrow and could free her from guilt by being alive. Since none of this is possible, she keeps spiraling into a figurative meltdown that only a literal melting can end.

Dorothy is her mirror. A girl not wholly unlike Elphaba in personality or demeanor, but she looks acceptable and accidentally kills a tyrant, so she’s seen as a symbol of goodness, and has no reason to be prickly. It’s only through Dorothy and her own accidental death that Elphaba can at last get rid of the Wizard. She died in that Witch’s guise, but with Dorothy seeing Elphaba as a grieving sister—and unknowingly poking the lifelong open wound—Elphaba is finally recognized as herself by at least one person before she goes. Dorothy does for her, and for Oz, all Elphaba couldn’t do.

That’s why the language about the body and the soul apologizing to each other in her death scene. It’s not so much about literal apologies as it is about her being made awake to having a soul—as Nessarose, in their last meeting, suggested—that is, to having a self, something to which she never consciously aspired.

It’s hard to choose freely—let alone take ownership of those choices—when you’ve internalized that you’re lesser, inherently harmful, and owe people your life for existing.

I feel like the musical’s Elphaba, while having that same overall experience, does have it better in at least one respect (even before we get to the ending.) At least she has Defying Gravity. She seems like she self-actualizes, and genuinely allows herself first to want things and then to reject them. Book Elphaba’s choice to join the resistance is to submerge herself in a greater, secret movement, at cost to all connection to those she cares for; it’s a righteous cause, but she traded one sense of self-denying obligation for another. Musical Elphaba stands out, invites Glinda, and declares herself free, even if this doesn’t last. She still has to leave Oz eventually, but at least she’s not alone, and she can know she’s leaving it a better place through Glinda.

When asked what's the difference between the book and play I usually tell a person the play is The Lion King, the book is Hamlet. It loosely follows the same threads but there are many key differences that are changed between the two mediums. I really enjoy both, however.

I found I generally liked Elphaba in the book more, but she was great in both version. I do imagine, however, that in the book despite her certainty that she can't cast spells I think she is actively casting some without even realizing it and her powers are very erratic as a result. It's interesting how the book is not as much about the themes of fascism and racism but more about how 1 person on their own can't always make a change. I need to read the other stories because I understand that it gets better and essentially Glinda's choice to change the system from within was the best. Basically: Elphaba can only change individual hearts from the outside, but Glinda was affected by Elphaba and is now in a place where she can change things systemically.

Elphaba being green is a reference to the movie. The Wizard of Oz filmmakers wanted to associate the  witche's wickedness with the green imagery of the emerald city. In L. Frank Baum's masterpiece, the witch is not green and her wickedness has nothing to do with money, but with slavery, control and domination.

We need a movie purely based on the book

I've read all of the books in the series.  I agree with your interpretation of the themes. Just popping in to give some extra context:  I'm pretty sure the green elixir is an invention of the musical, it was her hybrid status that made her as she is (and it was passed down to her granddaughter, skipping over her son, the granddaughter has the ability to read and control the grimmerie and has the green skin, establishing it as a genetic thing).  It is 100% confirmed that the wizard was Elphie's father in subsequent books. And Oz doesn't actually remember or believe in Dorothy's goodness,  as when she returns in "out of Oz" when 30ish years has passed in Oz and only 6 years has passed in our world, they hold a trial on Dorothy for murdering both heirs to the grand Thropp position (the matrilineal ruling title to the leader of the munchkins, their brother Shell is inelligible to it, which is why there's concern over munchkinland being in civil war against Oz even though Shell is emperor.) since there's politically strategic historic revision over all of Oz since very few still alive knew or remember the events of "the matter of Dorothy" as the events in the wizard of Oz are referred to as.

The Oziad isn’t an allegory to the Bible alone, but it’s more like the real-world Iliad, an arguable semi-fictionalized historical account of a possibly real-world event. The Oziad is supposed to do to Oz society what the Iliad has done to real-world Western civilization.