Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Political interpretations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Political interpretations of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" include treatments of the modern fairy tale (written by L. Frank Baum and first published in 1900) as an allegory or metaphor for the political, economic, and social events of America in the 1890s. Scholars have examined four quite different versions of Oz: the novel of 1900, the Broadway play of 1901, the Hollywood film of 1939, and the numerous follow-up Oz novels written after 1900 by Baum and others. The political interpretations focus on the first three, and emphasize the close relationship between
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for the fact that the West was still undeveloped at the time. The Munchkins Dorothy encounters at the beginning of the novel represent farmers, as do the Winkies she later meets. Baum's wife frequently visited her niece, Dorothy Louise Gage. The infant became gravely sick and died on November 11, 1898, from "congestion of the brain" at exactly five months. When the baby, whom Maud adored as the daughter she never had, died, she was devastated and needed to consume medicine. To assuage her distress, Frank made his protagonist of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" a female named Dorothy. Uncle