Wicked Gregory Maguire Pdf __FULL_

Prior to writing Wicked, Maguire became interested in examining the nature of evil from the perspective of someone considered evil.[1] He noted that while Baum had deliberately avoided using traditional fairy tale characters in writing the original novel, the Wicked Witch of the West was the sole exception, being depicted as the stereotypical "witch in her castle" figure, with wickedness her single defining character trait.[7] The novel raises the question of whether evil is inborn or acquired. Elphaba is a social outcast despite being of noble birth, which makes her question how much power she truly has over her own life.[8]

Writing for The American Experience, Rebecca Onion called Wicked "an extended meditation on power and politics."[9] Maguire has noted the similarities between the words "wicked" and "Hitler," calling it "no accident" that he chose this title for his book. He recalled reading a newspaper headline in 1991 comparing Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and feeling firsthand the emotional power of propaganda.[6] Maguire "set out to examine the language and propaganda used to marshal brute force against individuals or minorities that might have been opposed to the war."[10] In the book, one major plank of the Wizard's agenda involves the subjugation of sentient Animals[8] and Madame Morrible promotes this idea using a type of moralistic poem called a "quell." Elphaba instantly sees the propaganda for what it is.[11]

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The novel that sparked the inimitable Broadway show. A fractured fairytale (with a ton of heart) where the world of Oz is flipped on its head. Read in awe as Maguire single-handedly changes the reputation of the most wicked witch in literature.

Of course, it is the Wicked Witch of the West herself who dominates this time around: Elphaba, as she is called, is now the complicated centerpiece of a story that once seemed to belong to the relatively simple Dorothy. Brilliant, troubled, passionate, and powerful, Elphaba stands in marked contrast to the girl from Kansas, who, on the whole, takes a backseat to the natives of Oz in this version. Maguire's method with Elphaba's tale is to unpack the simple idea of a "wicked witch" and ask the question, How do you get to be "wicked"? The novel offers the possibility that what from one perspective is a simple case of villainy could be, from another point of view, a life that doesn't resolve into a simple set of "good" or "bad" actions. Book clubs will be particularly interested in following how, as a heroine, Elphaba is a strong, deeply modern woman, whose intelligence is both her great strength and a curse almost as powerful as her more fantastic features, emerald skin and monstrous teeth.Beyond the issues of moral character raised by Elphaba's story, Wicked provides readers with a host of delights, some of which echo the original Oz books and some of which are completely original. Reading groups will find that Maguire's language, and particularly his facility for making the world of Oz both contemporary yet fairy talelike, provides fertile grounds for conversation about just where the difference between the "fantastic" and the "realistic" can be drawn, a skill which may invite comparisons to writers like Gabriel García Márquez and Salman Rushdie. Reading groups will perhaps find their greatest pleasure in discussing what Maguire has taken from the original book, and how he has altered or mutated Baum's world. Book clubs may even be interested in comparing the famed film version of The Wizard of Oz with the novel, to see what the author has borrowed from that source. In this sense Wicked is far more than a cleverly twisted tale about good and evil witches, Munchkin society, and talking animals -- it is a book that shows how a children's story can become a larger myth for an entire society. Maguire invites us to think about how and why we read fantasy, what we take from it as children, and what we can see in it as adults. Wicked may be "updating" L. Frank Baum's original work, but it also reveals how the original remains so captivating to generations of readers, young and old. Bill TipperReading Group Materials from the Publisher

Summary When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

How did the Wicked Witch of the West, from Frank Baum's Oz stories, get to be so wicked? Gregory Maguire tells her story, in Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West. Author of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, Maguire seems to revel in turning our beloved fairy tales upside down, and having us rethink our cherished notions of absolute good and evil. The Wicked Witch wasn't born a witch, nor wicked. In Maguire's delightful telling, we learn of Glinda's obsession with status and fashion, the Wizard's inhumanity, and the friendships, loves, and lost loves of little green Elphalba, the story's moral center, who is ultimately destroyed by innocent Dorothy. This tale is more real, and more like life as we know and experience it, than the original. There's always a different side to a story, and in the case of Oz, this is it. A great read from start to finish. I could not put it down.

Wicked was absolutely "wicked good"! The characters were so deeply drawn and multifaceted. I love the coherence of the story line and of the Oz-ian universe, and the way pearls dropped from the beginning are strung together at the end, such as the Lion being the cub Elphaba spoke up for as a student, the Wizard recognizing the green elixer bottle, Elphaba seeking shelter in the Clock in which she was born, and so on. I was trying to think if Elphaba really did anything wicked - even when she went to kill the school principal, she ended up only striking a corpse. She killed the soldier tacked to the windmill to put him out of his pain. She didn't realize she killed the boy by staring at the icicle. I was most uncomfortable with the mean way she treated Lur and Nor. In the end she was so crazed with despair that the bucket of water was a welcomed escape from her misery, and I do think her soul was redeemed at the moment of her death. She was such a sympathetic character - I don't think I'll ever be able to look at Baum's book or the Judy Garland movie again! (And I have NO desire to see the Broadway show. Why mess with perfection?)

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked?

But, fast forward another, maybe, twenty five years, at the beginning of the Gulf War in 1991. At the time, there was so much worry about Saddam Hussein, and I remember seeing a newspaper article that said, 'Saddam Hussein, the next Hitler?' and when I saw the word Hitler, my blood began to run cold because there can hardly be a word that is scarier in the English language, if you're a person who tends toward dread, than Hitler. And even I, who am fairly pacifist, if not very pacifist, found myself thinking, "Well, who among us wouldn't have picked up arms against Hitler if we could have known the damage he was going to do to the world?" I began from there to think about how we seem to need to use words of degradation in order to dehumanize our enemies, in order to be able to pick up sticks and stones and go to battle against them. We have somehow to believe that they are less human than we are in order to get the courage to kill them. I began to think then, really, "What does make somebody wicked? What is evil, and how do we use it socially and culturally? How do we use the concept as a legitimization of our inclination toward greed and self-involvement and self-rationalization?"

Gregory Maguire: What impresses me most about the WICKED score is the variety between a certain impactedness and denseness of melodic line, on the one hand, and an airy loopiness on the other. In "No One Mourns the Wicked," for instance, the first phrase is made up of three notes tumbling over each other: "No one mourns the wicked...". The impact, musically, is of tension, a tightly-coiled aggressive energy musically related to the knots of vines that climb either side of the stage, or the interlocked gears of the clockwork stage design. (The tightness of the rhyming scheme enhances this effect, too, with "the good man scorns the wicked" following a few lines later.) Then the melodic line opens up with the first of the score's huge swooping lines for a solo voice, when Glinda sings "Goodness knows..." The earlier "Good news!" with which the play opens, an octave leap, is made sweeter and more plying, more convincing, more seductive when Glinda does the first of her own amazing soprano launches.

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a land where animals talk and strive to be treated like first-class citizens, Munchkinlanders seek the comfort of middle-class stability and the Tin Man becomes a victim of domestic violence. And then there is the little green-skinned girl named Elphaba, who will grow up to be the infamous Wicked Witch of the West, a smart, prickly and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived notions about the nature of good and evil.

The story is set in Oz long before Dorothy makes her visit. It tells the history of two witches who start as rivals, but become friends, then are torn apart by a world that would label one "good" and the other "wicked."

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