The Wicked Witch of the West is the antagonist character of the classic literature The Wizard of Oz by Lyman Frank Baum. Ninety-Five year after The
Wizard of Oz was published, an author named Gregory Maguire picked out the antagonist of The Wizard of Oz, The Wicked Witch of The West, and put her as the protagonist of the novel he was writing, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked
Witch of the West (shortened as Wicked later on in this paper). He transformed Baum’s mean antagonist, The Wicked Witch of The West, in The Wizard of Oz into the sympathetic protagonist Elphaba in Wicked. When Maguire wrote Wicked, he
used The Wizard of Oz as the source of his creativity.
Wicked is a novel about the life and times of The Wicked Witch of the West. In this novel, she is known as Elphaba. Maguire created the name Elphaba from the initial of The Wizard of Oz’s author, Lyman Frank Baum (El-Pha-Ba). In Wicked,
Elphaba’s life was wholly presented, from her birth, childhood to her adulthood. Like every typical young girl, Elphaba also had to deal with many different experiences and emotions in her life. Experiencing the first day at school, having social liability, and falling in love were some examples of common life stages that she had to deal with. |