This is MJ. I'm an author, I'm an artist, I'm an analyzer. You can find all my work at MJMunoz.com.
Welcome to Fortress Fiction, Episode 8, I believe. There's going to be a story over everything, Episode 56.
And I'm talking about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Al Frank Baum. This is the first book in the Oz series.
There are 14 books written by Al Frank Baum, and then there are dozens more written by other authors.
So right away, does The Wonderful Wizard of Oz belong in Fortress Fiction?
Does it hold a place of honor? Does it deserve a place of honor in the Fortress Fiction?
I'm going to say yes. Al Frank Baum purposely wrote the book not to be overly moralistic,
not to be something that would scare kids into being good, like the household tales of the Brothers Grimm collected,
but there is a great morality to it, and it's a very well-written book about a sweet, innocent girl
who makes friends with people and accomplishes great things by doing that, which is frankly amazing.
That's pretty much it. So Dorothy Gale is a very innocent character. She's a very simple character.
There's not a lot of complexity or nuance to her. She is a young child.
There's a lot of things. This was written in 1900, 1901, somewhere around there.
And a lot of these older books I find it's difficult to tell just how old the characters are,
because oftentimes people like George McDonald, the Princess and the Goblin, or Baum here, won't say,
or even I think the Pevens and the Children in C.S. Lewis's Line, which is in the wardrobe,
it's unclear how old they are, and possibly because these men were drawing on older fiction, older stories,
or older fairy tales, or because it was of the times, it was still relevant to them to write in this way,
or it was culturally acceptable, or it made sense to them the milieu they existed in.
They would say a young boy or a boy, and he would, you know, a man, and they'd be talking about a 15-year-old guy,
or they'd be talking about a girl, and it would actually be a maiden, a woman who's not married.
And it gets even more confusing because Judy Garland in the movie, which is not canon to the book,
they're different things, is, I don't know, 15, 16, 18, I don't know.
Anyway, I'm talking about the book, not the movie. So the book is even more vague.
Dorothy could be, from my perspective, anywhere from 6 years old to 12 years old,
to maybe even a little bit older than that, but it's very unclear.
She doesn't act like a baby. She just doesn't act like somebody who's very sophisticated,
but that also could be because she's an orphan who has been living with her aunt and uncle on this farm in Kansas,
and it's very... it's very un-peopled.
There are not a lot of people around that we get to tell, like, we don't know if Dorothy goes to school,
or if she's just being educated on the farm or anything like that, but none of that matters,
because the Kansas situation is just a backdrop for her to go into this other world.
She gets Issa Coyd to use a modern term into the land of Oz by virtue of a cyclone.
The cyclone lifts her whole house off of the cellar that Uncle Henry and Amher are in with the door closed,
and she just gets lifted up and goes away from them.
It's interesting because there's conflict in here and there's deadly danger that Dorothy and the others face,
but there's also a softness to it.
There's almost an assurance very early in the book that nothing bad is going to happen to Dorothy.
The cyclone is mentioned as being the eye of the storm is what's on Dorothy, what's lifting up the house.
And it's... talking about it as being very gentle, but strong air pressure, but it's gentle,
and she wasn't getting jostled about.
There was one time where she was kind of jostled, the house shifted from side to side,
and then Toto falls out the trapdoor that's in the house because it's built into it, but he's fine.
Dorothy was scared, but it turns out he was floating along,
and she picked him up by his ears and pulled him into the house and closed the trapdoor firmly so that that wouldn't happen again.
And the narration kind of lets you know, the speaker of the book kind of lets you know that things are going to be okay,
but it isn't done in a coddling way, it isn't done in like a cheeky fourth wall breaking away.
It's just kind of the way things are talked about, you know, oh, this would have been a danger except for this,
or at some point after she lands, after her house lands on the wicked witch of the east,
there's this witch of the north who is this little old witch.
She's described as being kind of like the munchkins, which are diminutive people,
and she kisses Dorothy on her forehead, and there's a mark left on her forehead.
She's got these silver shoes also, the ruby slippers, or I don't know if that was just the Garland movie,
if that was on the like the silent movie version of it, or where those came from, but they are silver shoes in this.
And anyway, these magical silver shoes have all this power in them that Dorothy doesn't know how to access,
and she's this innocent bearer of this amazing power, and the virtue or the power of the witch of the north,
and the silver shoes protects Dorothy from all sorts of harm, but still she is in danger, and Toto has no protection,
so Toto is the one who is in danger most of the time, I'm going to say, but even though that's not technically accurate.
Like he's the one who has the most to lose, or if Toto were to die, which he could, because he's just a regular meat dog,
which by the way, that's a term they use in this book, which is hilarious.
She would be very sad, Dorothy would be very sad, but she would ultimately be okay, she would move on from that,
be okay physically herself from any harm, but still the book acts as if the stakes are real for her,
that if the Kali-Daz, or the wolves, or the bees, or even the Winged Monkeys did anything to harm her,
you know, she could get hurt, but it's between the silver shoes and the mark on her forehead from the witch of the north,
she is always safe from dangers ultimately.
So it's almost like Bomb assures the reader in the beginning, through circumstances that happen in the book,
that Dorothy is going to be fine, and then he puts her in danger and neglects to mention that,
except for one time at the Winged Monkeys, they refuse to kill her, harm her, and they instead bring her to the Wicked Witch of the West,
because they say, hey, we're bound to help you to the best of our ability, but we cannot work against the charm,
or the spell put on Dorothy by the Witch of the North.
So that's interesting.
And there's like a lot of interesting world building stuff in here that Bomb sort of inconsistently expands upon in his further versions of the book,
or not further versions of this book, but in his further installments, the sequels of Wonderful Wizard of Oz,
and that's okay because it's all just so charming and good and sweet.
And, you know, what are the virtuous things? What are the things that will build up somebody from this book?
And if that's the focus or one of the focuses on Fortress Fiction, well, I'll tell you in a moment.
I would argue that the virtues on display or argued for, promoted in the Wonderful Wizard of Oz are those of innocence, kindness, trust, friendship, loyalty, humility.
I don't know if I said meekness already or not, but that is definitely one of them.
And those are all on display through different characters' actions at different times.
And there's a simplicity, which I think is really beautiful.
And a lot of the kindness and gentleness and meekness comes from Dorothy.
There's a humility that all the characters have, Cowardly Lion, Tin Woodman, Scarecrow, are all severely aware of deficiencies that they have in their character or person.
And they want to seek those things. And maybe even rectifying one's inadequacies is something that's in here.
Yeah, Dorothy wants to get home, and all these guys pledge themselves to her to help her get home because in helping her get home,
they are going to also do things that will help them to get what they want.
So I guess you could say cooperation is there too.
And it's interesting because they have a love for each other, a loyalty, a friendship that is formed through them going on this journey together.
And the spark for that or the instigator of that relationship and that connection is Dorothy with her humility and meekness and gentleness and kindness and her warmth and her willingness to accept others.
So all of that is part of what makes the book a really good candidate to be part of fortress fiction.
What makes it worthy? What makes it laudable?
And what I think makes it something that will help people to grow into better people from reading, loving and valuing the story.
Some of the things I want to say about the book itself is that one of the things I find most interesting is it has a very interesting structure where it feels very much like it's divided into quarters.
Like you can almost feel the structure of the book, which is interesting because in some ways it kind of builds anticipation for what's coming next and it keeps the engagement up.
Another interesting thing is that it's almost structured as if it's an adventure story where every chapter can be read on its own entirely and where every chapter tells a story beginning to middle beginning, middle then and where every chapter.
It is not necessarily necessary to enjoy the rest of the book, but it's like you're going on a quest or a series of adventures with these characters and the more you know them, the more enjoyable the quests are.
And yet they're written so skillfully that you don't really need the rest of the context. It just builds and it improves it when you have it.
So if I'd read chapter 17 out of context, it would have been good, but it wouldn't have been as good as it was after having come after chapters 1 through 16.
And I like that. I think that's really skillful.
Tom is very imaginative with the strange creatures that he puts in Oz and the way it's written, there seems to be no upper limit to the strange new creatures that you'll meet in this very country.
And there's a lot of kind of under the radar social commentary critique that is interesting.
It's old old book, so it's not our current cultural context, but there is still something there.
Oz is a fairy country because it is uncivilized and the Ozites determine that Dorothy must be from the civilized parts of the world because in the civilized parts of the world there are no more, which is there's no more magic.
There's no more fairy tale type things and this land of Oz is only a fairy country because it is uncivilized.
So the uncivilized nature of Oz is what allows it to have the magic and the wonder and some of the dangers that are associated with the fairy tale.
And it's interesting because it's not saying a fairy country is better than a non-fairy country, it's not saying a civilized or an uncivilized country is better than a civilized country, but for being an uncivilized country, being a fairy country, it is interesting how humane and loving and good
things can be there. And there might just be something there about the people who at bombs time were calling other people uncivilized and there might be something there about people who are today calling people uncivilized and what that really means.
And if there's a magic to the wild uncivilized things in this world, then perhaps we shouldn't be in a rush to civilize and tame everything in existence.
Maybe there's something foolish in that and maybe the things that we give up to live in a civilized world aren't worthwhile and maybe that's something we should consider.
It could be just my perspective who I am as a person interacting with this book, but I don't know, maybe I gave you similar thoughts.
That's about all I have to say about the book. It was really good. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had so much fun. I laughed out loud several times while listening to it.
And it's just charming. It's charming and it's sweet and it's good and it makes me happy. It's a fun story, a good, sweet, innocent, fun story, full of danger and courage and all sorts of good things.
It's got all the hooks to make a good story and it does it in a way that's totally family friendly and virtuous.
It gives an example of virtue and in goodness of these characters without telling you that that's exactly how you should be.
But you like all these people so much that you do want to be like them. You do want to be one of their friends and you want to fit in with Dorothy and her companions.
Okay, so it's time to wrap up this Love Fest by telling you a little bit about L. Frank Baum and his other works.
So I'm reading straight from the wiki.
So in addition to the 14 Oz books, Baum penned 41 other novels, not including four lost unpublished novels.
83 short stories over 200 poems and at least 42 scripts. He had numerous attempts to bring his works to the stage and screen.
The 1939 adaptation of the first Oz book became a landmark for 20th century cinema. Yes, yes it did and it was amazing.
So, career bibliography, how about that?
So we're going to go with, excuse me, we're going to go with works.
Okay, Mother Goose, so if you want to check out Bombs of the Works, here we go. You can check out any of these.
Mother Goose in Pros by the candleabra's glare. So that was 1897, 1898. Father Goose, his book, 1899.
A New Wonderland revised as the magical monarch of Moe on 1903. Oh, interesting, interesting.
The Army Alphabet, the Navy Alphabet, American fairytales, Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, The Enchanted Island of You, John Doe and the Cherub.
Let's see, The Sea Faries, Sky Island, Queen Zixie of Ix. Let me see, Land of Oz works. Let's skip over those and look at some of his other books.
Okay, I couldn't find it at first on the Wizard of Oz type page for Bombs, but he also wrote Girl Detective books, Mary Louise, that began in 1916 and Phoebe Daring in 1912.
It's the Daring Twins series, actually, so it's Phoebe and her brother Philip. So what is it? Yeah, Philip and Phoebe Daring.
So that's pretty neat. There were some other books he wrote, but I'm not going to list them all. You can definitely check them out.
You can find a lot of them on LibriVox or anywhere where there's public domain books. I suggest you do that.
All the 14 Oz books are fantastic. Phil Schindeverg does a great job reading them all on LibriVox.
Or if you want to use an audible credit on that, all his books are there. The 14 Bombs books by Phil Schindeverg are there on Audible, which is interesting.
I don't know what I'm going to be reading next time. Give me a moment. I'll check and I'll let you know.
The next Fortress Fiction will cover Ronja the Robber's Daughter by Astrid Lindgren, which was published in 1981.
So this is a modern book, not a classic book, like The Wonderful Was It A Oz. And it's about this.
Ronja grows up among a clan of wild robber men in a medieval magical forest.
After befriending the son of a rival robber, she attempts to unite the Phoenian families.
It's available on Audible, Kobo, and other audiobook retailers. It's available on paperback.
I don't know that there's a hardcover, but you can get the paperback anywhere. I looked at Cloud Library and I looked at Hoopla, and it was on neither of them.
So this is going to be a buy or a rent from a library that has one. You get a pretty inexpensive paperback.
I read partway through with my kids, but they weren't very good at the time at reading through whole books, but they're much better now.
So anyway, check it out.
I hope you enjoyed that. Go to MJMunoz.com to leave any questions, comments, or other feedback you might have.
There you can find all of my analysis, art, and fiction.
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Look around. You're sure to find something else that you'll enjoy as well.
This has been a story over everything production.