The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapters Seven to Ten

In which a summary becomes necessary for those who've only seen the movie, as our heroes encounter chasms, Kalidahs, and rivers, as well as some familiar poppies with some unfamiliar field mice, and the Emerald City is finally reached.



Well, since we managed to squeeze in four chapters this time, we've got a whopping twenty-eight Denslow illustrations. Seriously, the illustrations are very nearly one per page.

This here is our first glimpse of one of the more major differences between the book and the movie: the Kalidahs. I mean, yes, the shoes are a different color and we were greeted by a different Witch of the North, but these weren't in the movie at all. I do imagine that, in 1939, they might have had a difficult time convincingly making animals with the heads of tigers and the bodies of bears, large enough to rip a lion in half. In fact, nearly everything that happens in these four chapters is absent from the film.

You know, it occurs to me that I have very specific images in my head of many of these scenes, especially this one, but it's not from the Denslow illustrations. As I've mentioned, my childhood copy of the books didn't have any illustrations, but at some point -- possibly even prior to my buying those copies at the book fair -- I somehow had a cardstock accordion-fold-out version, where half the panels told a highly-abridged version of the story, while the other half had these beautiful, nearly photo-realistic painted illustrations. I can't find anything about it online, which is not surprising, considering the extreme popularity of the story and its public domain status. I wonder what happened to it? Probably in my mother's attic, somewhere. I'll have to look.

I know that's all very fascinating to you all. We can continue now.

So, did anyone else notice that around this time Dorothy introduces the Lion as, specifically, "the Cowardly Lion"? Does anyone else find that odd? I mean, while he's been referred to as such in the narration, he never called himself that. She just started titling him "cowardly" based on what was essentially a confidence he told her. It'd be like if she started introducing the other two as "my friends the Stupid Scarecrow and the Unfeeling Woodman."

 And here we've got a scene that was completely re-appropriated for the movie. While the basics are still the same — poppies, poppies will put them to sleep — you'll notice the absolute lack of Wicked Witchery in its cause, and of Good Witchery in its resolution.

So, am I the only one who notices that, for someone who was so broken up about steeping on a beetle, the Tin Woodman is rather cavalier about chopping this cat's head right off? I mean, I know he's doing it because he's being tender-hearted towards the mouse, but cats gotta eat too, and in a land where it appears all the animals can talk and have human intelligence? That's just cold. 'Course, same could be said for the Kalidahs earlier, but they were at least a clear and present danger to the party itself.

Notice again the architectural "face"on the city gates.

Boy, this guy sure looks like a charmer. And what do you suppose happened to his foot?

If you would like to read along, the text can be found at Project Gutenberg here without pictures, or here with. Though the illustrated page is where I got our illustrations from, the layout is wonky and can be hard to read, so to see what the text looks like with the illustrations properly integrated, take a look at this facsimile of the original edition up at openlibrary.org. No reading ahead, though!