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
His Majesty, the Scarecrow of Oz it back on. (The Wicked Witch of the East in "The Tin Woodman of Oz" is later described as having done a similar thing to him when he was still human.) Having replaced her head, Mombi encounters Pon and turns him into a kangaroo. Dorothy, Button-Bright, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman escape from Mombi by crossing a river on a raft. As in the original novel "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (1900), the Scarecrow's barge-pole gets stuck in the river bed and leaves him stranded, until he is rescued by a bird. At one point in this sequence, the