02 read in 2025

I mean, c’mon. How could I not? (Warning: spoilers abound.)

In the year of Wicked: The Musical, it was only right to read the semi-original source material. And my main conclusion from reading this spellbinding book is this: WHOA the musical sucks. Sure I love the sapphic overtones between Glinda and Elphie, I love the music and the funny little Wizard of Oz quips, I love the use of Boq and Nessarose. But ultimately it’s just a watered down mess.

Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West was published in 1995, in the middle of the Clinton presidency, and written during the peak of the AIDS crisis, as the government was just beginning to take action (the first meeting of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS was in July of 1995). There are also a lot of parallels between the trials of Oz and the Holocaust, those cannot be ignored. Of course the literal rounding up and caging of the Animals can be read as the removal and imprisonment of the disabled, LGBTQ+, Jewish, and non-Aryan people across Europe. But the main parallel that struck me was the ease of dictatorship in a place that craves authority. The people of Oz constantly are looking for a leader and there’s constant religious debates between characters, making it clear that Ozians are searching for a larger guiding figure. I mean, religion is the entire undercurrent of the story: the ever religious Frex is the father figure to Elphaba and the story basically opens on the Clock of the Time Dragon “infecting” the pure minds of Munchkinlanders:

“Who had engendered this Time Dragon, this fake oracle, this propaganda tool for wickedness that challenged the power of unionism and of the Unnamed God? The clock’s handlers were a dwarf and some narrow-waisted minions who seemed to have only enough brain capacity among them to pass a hat. Who else was benefiting besides the dwarf and his beauty boys?

Who can relate?

It makes sense that a few years after being published (less than 10), it would be adapted into a different form, in the middle of a Bush presidency and after 9/11, when another easy scapegoat, Arab- and Muslim Americans, took center-stage for the U.S. government to attack and vilify.

But here is where the main issue I have with the musical comes into play: turning a novel with a vast character diversity and ability to build out the governmental world of Oz into a musical, you’re forced to cut a lot out. Songs take up a lot of time that can’t be spent on world-building but usually have to focus on driving the emotional plot. The issue of using Wicked for this is the majority of the plot in the novel is driven by the passage of time and different characters’ place in the system of Oz. Songs about the sovereignty of the Vinkus territory (basically a quarter of the book) or about the inner workings of how the secession of Munchkinland from Oz are less punchy than a relatable ballad about feeling like you don’t belong with your true love. A love triangle between the three main character is definitely more entertaining than fleshing out the structures of an underground organization working to overthrow the government. And because of this, the real issues that the Wicked novel is able to parallel become a lot more cartoonish and unrelatable. Elphaba will always be green and that will always be a symbol of diversity, but it’s harder to musical-ify her work as a guerilla activist.

The other issue I have with the musical is the lack of characters. Obviously it’s easier to make Glinda marry Fiyero and have Elphaba be his piece on the side. But I LOVE Sarima. Sarima, her sisters, and her children are my favorite parts of the book. I love Sarima and Elphaba’s relationship and how interesting and different Kiamo Ko is compared to the rest of Oz. The musical also completely whitewashes the Vinkus territory and Fiyero himself, but what else can we expect.

I also think the use of Sarima and Kiamo Ko as evidence of the fascist government taking over Oz is incredibly helpful for the reader. If you look at the musical at face value, there is no real explanation of the fascist dictatorship. The Wizard is kinda just there, he’s in power and he is Being Evil. But that isn’t how evil works in the real world. Evil is sinister, evil is gradual, evil uses your sovereign hospitality then discards any niceties and imprisons and murders you. Part of what makes the Wicked novel so entrancing is the fact that the Wizard operates on many fronts and works over a long period of time and you can see, through Elphaba, how this strategy works. The Wizard utilizes the resources of the land to control the people of Oz, he understands how to make Dorothy a symbol for the Ozians, he even has Glinda give Dorothy the shoes because he understands that the shoes are a symbol for the desperate Munchkinlanders and can use them to gain more power.

“If the shoes fell into the hands of the Wizard, he would use them to bolster his claim to Munchkinland. Maybe, if she tried, she could shrug her shoulders and leave Munchkinland to its own fate—but damn it, the shoes were hers.

How interesting would that tidbit have been within the musical?!

Since the musical decides to place Elphaba’s story after the rise of the Wizard to power instead of during, you can forgo all the messy details of how a dictatorship rises and the people of a land can become complacent.

Ultimately, the grimness of the story and the bureaucracy of the world is what makes the novel of Wicked so compelling. It’s nice to have a happy ending, it’s nice that Fiyero did end up being the Scarecrow as book Elphaba so wished he was, it’s nice that Glinda mourned her friend. But nice can be a disappointment and it can lack depth. As much as I love Elphie’s resurrection at the end of the musical, I appreciate her accidental death at the hands of Dorothy much more.

“In the life of a Witch, there is no after, in the ever after of a Witch, there is no happily; in the story of a Witch, there is no afterword. Of that part that is beyond the life story, beyond the story of the life, there is—alas, or perhaps thank mercy—no telling. She was dead, dead and gone, and all that was left of her was the carapace of her reputation for malice.”

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