Wicked, the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West: the Importance of Being an Animal

The issue of Elphaba's wickedness is directly related to the political unrest that results in Oz as a result of the arrival of the Wizard. Prior to Wizard appearance in Oz and his co-opting of religious and social fabric of the land, the religious tradition was based on Lurline the Fairy Queen and her daughter Ozma whom she placed as ruler. Part of the cosmology of Oz and Lurline has to do with the endowment of consciousness to beast of burden, and the underlying thematic tone of this fascinating story has far more important than might be expected. Essentially, Lurline relieves herself to create the Gillikin River, which the animals saw as a threatening flood with the power to devastate their world, or as Elphaba intellectually deconstructs it, "a baptism by piss...a subtle way both to explain the talents of the Animals and to denigrate them at the same time" (115). The animals hurled themselves into the violent flow in an effort to escape certain death. Those who turned away from the effort remained grounded in their animal state, while those who actually achieved the goal of making it to the safety of the banks received the reward of sentience and consciousness. The element at work as far as Elphaba's mission to return the dignity of Animals taken away by the Wizard is that the Lurlinest religion was a matriarchal myth. Part of the Wizard's plan in ruling Oz is to deconstruct and explode the matriarchal tradition and impose a patriarchal one.