Feeling Lost in Oz?

The classic tale can be read as a metaphor for states of threat and safety.

Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano

The Wizard of Oz has long been felt to be a social, economic, and political allegory reflecting the times at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Arguably, it is a timeless story, really a commentary, about the human experience within the “civilized” world.

Consider the tornado to be the tumultuous times that we still live in: the chronic, cumulative, and compounding threats of the modern world spinning us into a dizzying, less than conscious, illusionary dream-like state that carries us to the land of Oz. “We’re not in Kansas anymore”.

The Land of Oz is filled with lurking predatory threats—“Lions and tigers and bears, Oh My!”—along the Yellow Brick Road. Additionally, the Yellow Brick Road is made from fool’s gold pavers as a symbolic illustration of the deceptive path of pursuing money to find happiness. At the end of that illusionary road is the Emerald City, symbolic of a modern metropolis and its financial machinations. The Yellow Brick Road at its end proves to be a dead end and the Emerald City a false heaven.

Within the Emerald City an amplified and blustering savior lives within a palatial fortress guarded by an army of soldiers who loyally protect him and his deceptions. This savior, the Wizard, is believed to possess the ultimate knowledge and the power to fix all things. Once his curtain is pulled back, he is found out to be only a trickster and a fraud. Behind the veil lies just a selfish, insecure, bumbling, incompetent who readily admits, “I am not a very good Wizard.”

The question arises, What is Oz, a man, a place, or power? The answer: the illusion of a man, a place, and a power.

The Wicked Witch and the Good Witch are symbolic of the many phenotypes of humans along the spectrum of threat to safety. The Wicked Witch represents the antisocial, isolated, and paranoid phenotype of threat, whereas, the Good Witch represents the kind, compassionate, and nurturing phenotype of safety.

The Good Witch stands alone, separate from the dysfunction and chaos of Oz, symbolic of the strength of feminism and the maternal. The enlightened Good Witch guides, offers hope, and, when needed, offers a helping hand, too, but refrains from trying to be a savior.

The Wicked Witch cultivates a band of monkeys, symbolic of the diminished human brain when in threat, to do her evil bidding. Her simple subjects recognize, “once we were free people, living happily in the great forest, flying from tree to tree, eating nuts and fruit and just doing as we pleased without calling anyone master…this was long before [the conman] Oz came out of the clouds to rule over this land.”

The witches should not be misconstrued to be some form of a good-versus-evil battle, but the depiction of the differences in people based on whether they are in a threat state versus one of safety. The witches represent a continuum more than they are entities of opposition. Interestingly, heat melts most objects, yet it is cool and cleansing water that melts the Wicked Witch. Inflammation is an accelerant of threat, of antisocial and evil behavior, not their deterrent, and melting isn’t annihilation, it is transformation.

Dorothy represents the populace—naive, pure, and confused by the world around her. She is consumed by the cultural notions of right and wrong, and conformance. Whereas her dog, Toto, has no such notions and represents the innocent and untarnished, yet impulsive and uninhibited instincts of a child. Ultimately, it is Toto who unmasks the Wizard and starts the unraveling of the Illusion of Oz.

Oz is filled with people of stunted growth, the Munchkins, deceived by or complicit in the illusion of Oz. We also see along Dorothy’s journey from the Lollipop Guild to the poppy fields other reflections of our modern culture held up before us. The lollipop is a colorful and sugary treat to distract from the reality and suffering of the world, only to lead to disease, disability, pain, and more suffering. Whereas the poppy field is emblematic of the dissociation and dysfunction from the plague of opioids that, too, has led to further disease, disability, pain, suffering, and unnecessary deaths.

Dorothy has her companions—the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion—with her on her fateful journey to Oz. The Scarecrow has been equated to the disenfranchisement of the rural agricultural world, the farmer, whereas the Tin Man has been equated with the disenfranchisement of the urban industrialized world, the laborer.

The neglected Tin Man has a predisposition for stiffening up and rusting, and his dependency on oil is a double entendre within the story. The Cowardly Lion has been suggested to be a representation of the cowardice of the political class to stand up to the deceitful and deceptive powers of the few, the elites, and a weakness and inability to do the right thing for the populous, the people.

Arguably, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion are not literal companions to Dorothy nor just metaphorical sociopolitical commentary but are symbolic of Dorothy’s physiology during her journey through Oz. This physiology can be seen as creating an internal conflict for Dorothy between how she feels and behaves and how she wants to feel and behave.

The distinctly human frontal expansion of the brain that is missing in monkeys, let’s call it the “sapiocortex,” is relatively offline when humans are in threat. Specifically, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex responsible for contemplation, reasoning, planning, and judgment is offline; the Scarecrows wishes “if I only had a brain.”

The ventromedial prefrontal cortex responsible for connection, collaboration, compassion, and kindness is also offline in threat states—the Tin Man’s hope for a heart. Finally, escalating chronic threat takes us from fight to flight to falter to faint as we see the Cowardly Lion express his anger but also his anxiety, sadness, despair, weakness, and wobbling fainting knees.

When in threat humans can’t think, can’t empathize, and feel afflicted by aversive emotions; chronic threat brings on degeneration and ill health. The dialogue between Dorothy and her companions is really the dialogue within herself as she experiences the distress of being in The Land of Oz.

More than a century after the writing of The Wizard of Oz, the story still resonates. If you are feeling like you are in The Land of Oz, it is because you are—things haven’t changed that much. Just know escaping Somewhere Over the Rainbow isn’t the solution to a dystopian world.

The cure for this nightmarish scenario of Oz, the escape from The Land of Oz, in the end is a simple formula, but it requires intention:

1. Dispense with personal illusions and the culture of illusions.
2. Reduce personal and societal threats.
3. Provide safety for yourself and for others.

Click your heel three times: 1, 2, 3: “You’ve always had the power, my dear. You’ve had it all along.”

“There is no place like home”—safe, seen, and secure,

DRC