Dorothy Gale relative. (It is also possible that "Aunt" and "Uncle" are affectionate terms of a foster family and that Dorothy is not related to either of them, although Zeb in "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz" claims to be Dorothy's second cousin, related through Aunt Em. Little mention is made of what happened to Dorothy's birth parents, other than a passing reference to her mother being dead.) Along with her small black dog, Toto, Dorothy is swept away by a tornado to the Land of Oz and, much like Alice of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", they enter an alternative world filled
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz continued to include these faces on gates. Baum did not offer any conclusive proof that he intended his novel to be a political allegory. Historian Ranjit S. Dighe wrote that for 60 years after the book's publication, "virtually nobody" had such an interpretation until Henry Littlefield, a high-school teacher. In his 1964 "American Quarterly" article, "The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism", Littlefield posited that the book contained an allegory of the late 19th-century bimetallism debate regarding monetary policy. Littlefield's thesis achieved some support, but has been strenuously attacked by others. "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" has become an established