On a Census of Senses in Oz-Land: Adventures in the Land of Silence and Light

JF Ptak Science Books  Post 1980   

With the endless images of the Land of Oz in our minds from the book and movie it is easy for the other lands generated by their creator L. Frank Baum to escape our attention   Oz isn't the only place that Dorothy traveled to--far from it.  She went very far and wide in the mind of Baum, who was extraordinarily prolific both inside and outside of the Oz series.

From 1900-1919, Baum (1856-1919) wrote 17 Oz books, as well as another 18 books in the non-Oz realm, plus 17 books in a juvenile series for girls under the pseudonym of Edith Van Dyne, plus six more books under the name of Floyd Akers, plus another seven other books under five other names, plus a pretty wide assortment (200+) of short stories, plus plays. Plus all of the stuff he wrote before 1900.  That's a LOT of writing in 19 years.

This all came to mind thinking about the beginning of the fifth Dorothy adventure following the original story of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz published in 1900--Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz, 1980¹--which has, in a way, the antithetical beginning, a sort of polar opposite, to the tornado-y start to The Wizard of Oz. Rather than a tornado being the precipitator of the coming events, the 1908 book begins in California with an earthquake (perhaps inspired by the San Francisco 'quake of 1906?) that swallows up Dorothy and Uncle Zeb and a horse named Jim and Dorothy's cat, Eureka. And nine tiny pigs. They fall into the Earth (except that the Wizard floats down, slowly, aboard his balloon that he was using to entice people into the Barnum and Bailey circus for which he was working)to discover other an interior Earth, complete with separate lands of very remarkable qualities. 

The storyline has more to do with returning to the surface rather than being an adventure in Oz--in fact less than a third of the book has to do with Oz itself, and then mostly it was a place out of harm's way on the way back home. One of the places Dorothy visits on her way back to the surface of the Earth is a very ingeniously-created country  called the Land of the Gargoyles,  a place in which everything is composed of wood. Wood is everywhere, and all in a deep wooden silence, all protected by flying wooden gargoyles who fear noise of any sort, flying about on wings of wood fixed with wooden screws, landing on wooden grass of wood shavings, moving around in the sawdust soil. The gargoyles also have an abundant fear of fire. It is the sound element though--or the silence--that is the most interesting feature of the place to me.

Another part of this adventure finds Dorothy in the Land of the Mangaboos, which is her initial contact with subterranean civilizations.  The geography of this country seemed similar to the one on the surface of the Earth, except that everything kept changing color, the effect generated by the six different suns of six different colors. There was a central sun much like our own, though this had five other suns in (stationary?) orbit around it, all making for an interesting stellar astrophysics: one sun was rose, another violet, then yellow, blue and orange. They also were a fixed feature there underground, maintain the same position throughout time. There was a continuous day in the Land of the Mangabos, always bright and always light, and it seems that the inhabitants had no way of reckoning time.  (Except that they did, as the Mangaboos were a race of vegetable people who grew on vines for many years, through their childhood and past their adolescence, waiting in silence and inaction until they had reached maturity, at which time they were plucked from the vine and entered a cognizant life. The problem though was that most of these people lived for only five years, the bulk of their lives spent in maturation limbo. So there was a method of keeping time--it just didn't depend on anything resembling a solar clock).  The Mangaboos are described so:

                  "They're cold and flabby, like cabbages, in spite of their prettiness." [Dorothy]

"I agree with you. It is because there is no warm blood in them,"
remarked the Wizard.

"And they have no hearts; so they can't love anyone--not even
themselves," declared the boy.

 It is from the Land of Mangaboos that Dorothy and her retinue escape--accused of causing all manner of destruction to the place's glass structures by instigating a Rain of Stones, and found to be worthy of a death sentence for that and for being made of flesh and blood which was deemed unacceptable in a land of vegetables, they make their way to the Valley of Voe.  The inhabitants here were interesting in that they were invisible, though Dorothy had to escape the clutches of invisible bears who though unseen were still dangerous, doing so by finding a way to walk on water.  It is from this place that our hero is able to return to the surface, along with her crew.

I feel certain that there could be an interesting census of the senses in Baum--just dipping into this one Oz book shows the possibility of his fantastical call on creative sense appeal. 

There may be one great missing piece of armor plate in Baum's personal sense census, though--a bit of common sense. He was a progressive thinker for his day, particularly in regards to women's rights and suffrage. On the other hand, there was the issue of the Native American.  Baum wrote two editorial pieces in the Aberdeen Saturday Review (South Dakota) in December 1890 and January 1891 in which he called for the extermination of the Indians.  It seems to me that he attempted a very drippingly heavy sarcasm in the pieces along the line of A Modest Proposal, but it seems as though the social outrage in the killing of  Native Americans might have been too hidden and overplayed.  I'm not very much convinced that he felt this way although there are many who feel as though he did; if you look hard enough at what he wrote you can see a political point was being made against the extermination policies, but I think it was just badly constructed. His manner just was not effective, and could be read in a pro-extermination slant.  For example, he writes: "Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth". It seems that if Baum was trying to be Bierce, he mostly failed². 

Notes

1.  The full title is pretty full: Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz: a faithful record of their amazing adventures in an underground world; and how with the aid of their friends Zeb Hugson, Eureka the Kitten, and Jim the Cab-Horse, they finally reached the wonderful Land of Oz. 

2. The quotes from the Aberdeen newspaper are from the Wiki article on Baum, here.

The editorials are as follows:

December 20, 1890 (five days after the killing of the Lakota Sioux holy man, Sitting Bull):

Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead.

He was not a Chief, but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position to the greatest Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness and daring.

He was an Indian with a white man's spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies.

The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in latter ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroize.

We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins of America.

 January 3, 1891:

The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and vacillating a person as General Miles to look after the uneasy Indians, has resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers, and a battle which, at best, is a disgrace to the war department. There has been plenty of time for prompt and decisive measures, the employment of which would have prevented this disaster.

The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination  [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.

An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that "when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre