Gospel Lessons from The Wizard of Oz

I have to share with you all a personal anecdote that has affected me of late.

Reading the Book

Over the last few weeks, I have been reading to my daughter “The Wizard of Oz”, the book by Frank L. Baum.

This has been made possible because of three factors: first, she is familiar enough with the 1939 movie of the same name. Luckily, she has yet to see any of the atrocious “sequels” of the last few years. Her love of the story, the songs, and her being relatable to the main character–Dorothy–has been her guide.

The second factor is the rise of the eBook reader, namely, the Kindle Fire. It is hard enough to read a book for which there is no pictures. But the Kindle Fire makes it incredibly attractive. For one, it allows one to change the font, increase the size, and alter the color of the background to something far more readable for her.

Because of this, instead of a wall of text, there are much less words to read per page, making it entirely palatable for her to see the words clearly, and not get overwhelmed.

She also loves the interactive nature of the reader. If she sees a word she doesn’t recognize, she loves pressing the word to get a definition. It makes learning fun.

The third factor is the nature of the book itself; it is very episodic. Which means that the book is simply a series of short anecdotes tied together into one giant narrative. Being a series of short anecdotes, we can read one such anecdote at a time, with no fear that we must rush to the end.

I am usually one who likes to complete a book as soon as possible, but I was able to read the book in its entirety in advance. I was able to do this because of Whispersync, a feature that alternates reading on the page, with listening to an audiobook. I can listen to the book in the car, and then when I pick up the book to read it, it is smart enough to sync to where I had left off. This greatly cuts down the time it takes to read the book. (To top it off, Oscar winner Anne Hathaway did the reading, and her performance was utterly fantastic).

Anecdote # 1

In reading The Wizard of Oz, I became enlightened on meanings I had never encountered from merely watching the movie.

For example, it appears that the four central characters all lacked something that made them appear whole. These four central aspects: a brain, a heart, courage, and a desire to return home, all have a 1-to-1 correlation with our own personae, to which we are to follow the Greatest Commandment. We are to love the Lord with our whole…

• Heart (which the Tin Woodman desired)
• Soul (whose final resting place is heaven, and is currently not home, which was Dorothy’s desire)
• Mind (which is what the Scarecrow desired)
• Strength (we need courage to follow through obedience, which is what the Lion desired).

Anecdote# 2

There are other amusing anecdotes throughout the read that the movie could not pick up upon. There was a story where the Tin Woodsman stepped on a beetle, killing it. And this made him sad, that it began to make him cry. The tears went down his face, where it proceeded to rust the hinges of his jaw, after which he was unable to talk.

When Dorothy and the others saw the Tin Woodsman’s situation, they panicked and did not know what to do. The one who figured it out, was, surprisingly, the Scarecrow. He understood that the Tin Woodsman needed to have his jaw-hinges oiled.

Now, after we read this passage, I pointed out to my daughter how it was that the Tin Woodsman felt so sorrowful for the beetle he had inadvertently stepped on… how was it he was in need of a heart, when he already felt such pain? And… how was it that the only one in the group who figured out the solution to the Tin Woodsman’s dilemma was the Scarecrow, when he supposedly lacked a brain?

I believe that the author was subtly hinting that there are times where we think we lack a certain thing, when we, in actuality do have the means to attain it, but need to work it through to realize it was with us all along.

And so it is with our spiritual lives. We may envy others who have attained a certain level of holiness, but we have all been blessed with the exact same baptism and infusion of the Holy Spirit that those Saints were. It is only in going through trials that we discover the gifts of the Holy Spirit that can sustain us over time, and build upon character in our own souls.

Concluding Thoughts

We still have a ways to go with our reading, but already this is growing into an incredible bonding experience between me and my daughter. And I can say this outright: the movie is every bit a classic and deserves to be shown for each ensuing generation.

But the book is still better.