Let's read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

[pendell]

I mean, Baum is trying to explain to six-year-olds that fire is a threat to the Scarecrow without talking down to them. How would you do it?

...
.....
.......

"I'm afraid of fire?"


Shouldn't be a problem for a six-year-old, I should think.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[gbaji]

"I'm afraid of fire?"


Shouldn't be a problem for a six-year-old, I should think.

If he's trying to get some kind of safety message out there, telling children "don't play with matches" seems like a reasonable follow up to "fire is dangerous".

[PontificatusRex]

If he's trying to get some kind of safety message out there, telling children "don't play with matches" seems like a reasonable follow up to "fire is dangerous".

I think Scarecrow saying his big fear is a lit match points out just how vulnerable he is to fire. If he had just answered "Fire", well, sure, fire can be scary and incredibly destructive, being especially afraid of it doesn't seem unusual. But for a regular person a lighted match is really no big deal unless it accidentally creates a bigger fire. For the Scarecrow, the match itself could be the end of him.

Also, I looked it up and the first matches as we recognize them were introduced in 1826, though they didn't catch on until safer versions appeared in the 1850's. It's interesting to consider how matches have a low-tech feel about them so their inclusion in Oz or Middle earth doesn't seem too out of place, whereas the adoption of the telegraph happened even earlier in the 1840's but would seem completely incongruous to a fantasy setting.

"Send a telegram to Rohan to saddle up and get their asses to Minas Tirith!"

[pendell]

Also, I looked it up and the first matches as we recognize them were introduced in 1826, though they didn't catch on until safer versions appeared in the 1850's. It's interesting to consider how matches have a low-tech feel about them so their inclusion in Oz or Middle earth doesn't seem too out of place, whereas the adoption of the telegraph happened even earlier in the 1840's but would seem completely incongruous to a fantasy setting.

I concede that matches are an innovation of the 19th century -- this book WAS published in 1899 , after all -- but I don't think that follows that Oz has 19th-century-equivalent technology. Except for the matches -- which I wonder to what extent this is an anachronism -- farmers with scarecrows and what not could be anywhere in the preindustrial technological continuum from Late Roman Empire (they have a very nice paved road, so I would argue that would be minimum date) all the way up to late-18th century.

Spoiler

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A side effect of this is that witches and wizards aren't generally spellcasters. They are people who professionally collect, study, and use magical items and materials.

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Not wanting to get ahead of ourselves, but I have read the next chapter where the wicked witch is indeed described as putting a spell on someone. So I don't think we can draw that conclusion from this book though I acknowledge it might be retconned into later books that I have not yet read.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Willie the Duck]

If anything, I think it highlights that Oz isn't set in some specific time period, it's just a bizarre fantasy elsewhere existing in the now of the 1890s. Would they have telegraphs or hot air balloons? No, then they wouldn't be an isolated land no one has heard of. Do they have matches or sewing machines or aspirin or chewing gum (or any other invention of the mid-late 19th century)? Sure if it comes up.

[Ionathus]

Didn't the first draft of The Hobbit feature trains, and mention China?

I read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz a long time ago but I still remember it was fairly anachronistic, and that didn't seem to bother me at the time.

[PontificatusRex]

The technological level of Oz is an interesting question. I suspect that like a lot of fantasy settings, it jumps around a lot and isn't consistent with any exact time in history. My mind leaps immediately to Narnia, which is mostly typical medieval fantasy style except in the first book there are clearly signs of some kind of industrial culture off stage that we never see, such as Mrs Beaver owning a sewing machine.

So, continuing our trip down the Yellow Brink Road:

Chapter 5: Let's Get Serious About the Non-Locality of Consciousness The Rescue of the Tin Woodsman

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Dorothy wakes up with the Scarecrow still watching and waiting, while Toto has gone off to chase things. Dorothy declares the need to find some water, which starts another conversation with the Scarecrow about how strange and inconvenient it is to have biological needs. But, he believes, the trade off would be worth it to have brains.

After finding water and having breakfast (rations are getting low), they are about to head back to the road when they hear a deep groan nearby. Once again they show their absolute ignorance of horror stories by deciding to investigate. They follow a second groan to a small clearing where they find, you guessed it, the frozen figure of a man made of tin, his axe uplifted.



Luckily the figure is still able to talk, and after Dorothy inquires he explains he has been stuck there over a year and Dorothy is the first person to hear him. Or perhaps she was the first person not to decide the weird groaning sound in the woods was a good reason to leave said woods asap.

Toto, being the aggro little dog he is, tries to bite the leg of the Tin Man but only hurts his teeth.

Dorothy, being the good-hearted person she is, immediately asks if she can help, and the Tin Man tells her there is an oil can on the shelf of his house nearby, which is actually the building she stayed in the night before - well that makes sense.

Oil can retrieved, there is a pretty comical scene of the Tin Man getting his joints loosened, first his neck, then arms - he is very relieved to be able to lower his axe - and then his legs. Unlike the film, he needs help even after the oil is applied because everything is rusted together, and the Scarecrow needs to twist and bend the various parts before they can actually move.

The Tin Man is very polite and grateful, and after he asks their errand he of course asks if perhaps Oz could give him a heart. Once he is added to the party he quickly proves useful, as they reach a section of the road so overgrown it would have been impassable without him to chop his way through.

It's not stated up front, but I can't help thinking that part of the Tin Woodsman's job was keeping the road clear, and without him to do it the road became unusable. I wonder how long it has been since anyone traveled from the Emerald City to Munchkinland or vice versa? Clearly, the trade routes are not busy.

During the walk the Scarecrow and the Tin Man start debating the benefits of brains vs a heart. Interesting to note: the Tin Man no longer possesses either but he once had both and is of the opinion that a heart is superior.

The Tin Man then tells his story, which is just weird. I mean, I already knew it from other sources than reading the original book, and it's still really weird.

The Tin Man was a woodsman all his life, his father having been so before him. After his parents die (no foul play implied, just age) he decides to marry and falls in love with a beautiful Munchkin girl - it's not clear whether he is actually a Munchkin himself or not. She promises to marry him when he has enough money for a bigger house. But the girl lives with an old woman - not described as a relative of any kind - who is lazy and doesn't want the girl to marry and leave, she wants her to stay and be her caretaker. So the woman makes a deal with the Wicked Witch of the East - for two sheep and a cow the witch will prevent the marriage.

The Witch is an oppressive despot but she is happy to make deals too, apparently. I wonder what the exchange rate is for livestock in Oz.

The Witch puts an enchantment on the axe, quite a horrible one. While the Woodsman Who Is Not Yet Tin is working, his axe slips and chops off his left leg. Ouch!

"This at first seemed a great misfortune"...um,yeah. "For I knew a one-legged man could not do very well as a wood-chopper."

So, the immense physical trauma of chopping off one's leg wasn't top of the problem list, apparently, being able to continue to work is. Geez, and we talk about the stress of living in late-stage capitalism in the 21st century. I mean, I know it's a kids' book, Baum isn't going to go into gory detail about the real life effects of losing a limb, but still.

"So I went to a tin-smith and had him make me a new leg out of tin."

He seems pretty casual about this. Are tin prosthetics a common thing in Oz? We never see anyone else with them so we can only assume this was a singular inspiration on the Woodsman's part.

"My action angered the wicked Witch of the East, for she had promised the old woman I should not marry the pretty Munchkin girl. When I began chopping again my axe slipped and cut off my right leg. Again I went to the tinner, and again he made me a leg out of tin."

Okay, I can see why he would think the first time was a freak accident, but maybe start looking for a pattern? Also, the Woodsman must have crazy first aid/tourniquet skills, to lose a limb and then get himself to the tinsmith before dying from blood loss.

"After this the enchanted axe cut off my arms, one after the other; but, nothing daunted, I had them replaced with tin ones."

Okay, dude, we need to talk. I'm starting to think there is some back dealing between the Witch and the tinsmith here. Did you ever once consider getting a new axe?

"The wicked Witch then made the axe slip and cut off my head, and at first I thought that was the end of me. But the tinner happened to come along, and he made me a new head out of tin."

So. Many Questions. But collusion is looking a lot more likely all of a sudden.

"I thought I had beaten the wicked Witch then, and I worked harder than ever"

Dude! It's called medical leave! Oh wait, self employed.

"I little knew how cruel my enemy could be. She thought of a new way to kill my love for the beautiful Munchkin maiden, and made my axe slip again, so that it cut right through my body, splitting me into two halves."

You know, I'm no lumberjack but I've done some woodchopping, and I'm having a really hard time imagining the mechanics of cutting your torso in half by accident. I think this axe is at like animated +5 Axe of Dancing level. Also, it just occurs to me that there is never any mention of him getting a new axe. Is he still using the same axe that dismembered and beheaded him? I think he is. That is super creepy. But maybe not having a heart means not making morbid associations either...?

"Once more the tinner came to my help and made me a body of tin, fastening my tin arms and legs and head to it, by means of joints, so that I could move around as well as ever."

Maybe the Woodsman got a beeper at some point, like the way a senior citizen can summon 911 with one button if they fall or something. And this tinsmith is quite the craftsman, for sure.

"But, alas! I had now no heart, so that I lost all my love for the Munchkin girl, and did not care whether I married her or not. I suppose she is still living with the old woman, waiting for me to come after her."

Oh, that's cold. He doesn't love her anymore, but he remembers loving her and wishes he could again. No mention of what she thinks, of course? Would she want to marry a Tin Man just because of his emotional capacity? I'm getting Robocop flashbacks.

Also, I think we have a serious Ship of Theseus paradox here. Is he still the same person after every piece of him has been replaced? Where was his consciousness residing when his head was chopped off, and how did it return to his body?

I think he's a new thing with the memories of the biological entity he replaced bit by bit, like an uploaded personality from a cyberpunk novel. That would also explain why he never mentions his old name.

"My body shone so brightly in the sun that I felt very proud of it and it did not matter now if my axe slipped, for it could not cut me."

Okay, I just want to point out that Tin from Oz is more like adamantium than the tin we know. I can smash or cut through tin pretty easily. Even if he's solid tin all the way through instead of a hollow shell, he seems far more damage resistant than he should be.

Of course, he gets cocky and goes out to chop wood without bringing his oil can one day, and one rainfall later he's stuck until Dorothy rescues him. He says that when he was frozen his greatest loss was realizing the void from not having a heart, and he intends to ask the Munchkin girl to marry him when Oz gives him a new one. Again, no question about her views on the matter.

The Tin Man and Scarecrow once again declare the supremacy of their quest goals, and Dorothy wonders which is correct - what's more important, heart or brains? She decides it doesn't matter as long as she gets home to Aunt Em (aha, family is the reason to go home, explicitly stated!) and that her friends get what they want.

The chapter closes with Dorothy looking at her nearly empty basket and getting Seriously Concerned about Rations.

So, I knew about the history of the Tin Woodsman before reading this, but it's still just seriously bizarre.

[pendell]

The technological level of Oz is an interesting question. I suspect that like a lot of fantasy settings, it jumps around a lot and isn't consistent with any exact time in history. My mind leaps immediately to Narnia, which is mostly typical medieval fantasy style except in the first book there are clearly signs of some kind of industrial culture off stage that we never see, such as Mrs Beaver owning a sewing machine.

So, continuing our trip down the Yellow Brink Road:

Chapter 5: Let's Get Serious About the Non-Locality of Consciousness The Rescue of the Tin Woodsman

Spoiler

Show

Dorothy wakes up with the Scarecrow still watching and waiting, while Toto has gone off to chase things. Dorothy declares the need to find some water, which starts another conversation with the Scarecrow about how strange and inconvenient it is to have biological needs. But, he believes, the trade off would be worth it to have brains.

After finding water and having breakfast (rations are getting low), they are about to head back to the road when they hear a deep groan nearby. Once again they show their absolute ignorance of horror stories by deciding to investigate. They follow a second groan to a small clearing where they find, you guessed it, the frozen figure of a man made of tin, his axe uplifted.



Luckily the figure is still able to talk, and after Dorothy inquires he explains he has been stuck there over a year and Dorothy is the first person to hear him. Or perhaps she was the first person not to decide the weird groaning sound in the woods was a good reason to leave said woods asap.

Toto, being the aggro little dog he is, tries to bite the leg of the Tin Man but only hurts his teeth.

Dorothy, being the good-hearted person she is, immediately asks if she can help, and the Tin Man tells her there is an oil can on the shelf of his house nearby, which is actually the building she stayed in the night before - well that makes sense.

Oil can retrieved, there is a pretty comical scene of the Tin Man getting his joints loosened, first his neck, then arms - he is very relieved to be able to lower his axe - and then his legs. Unlike the film, he needs help even after the oil is applied because everything is rusted together, and the Scarecrow needs to twist and bend the various parts before they can actually move.

The Tin Man is very polite and grateful, and after he asks their errand he of course asks if perhaps Oz could give him a heart. Once he is added to the party he quickly proves useful, as they reach a section of the road so overgrown it would have been impassable without him to chop his way through.

It's not stated up front, but I can't help thinking that part of the Tin Woodsman's job was keeping the road clear, and without him to do it the road became unusable. I wonder how long it has been since anyone traveled from the Emerald City to Munchkinland or vice versa? Clearly, the trade routes are not busy.

During the walk the Scarecrow and the Tin Man start debating the benefits of brains vs a heart. Interesting to note: the Tin Man no longer possesses either but he once had both and is of the opinion that a heart is superior.

The Tin Man then tells his story, which is just weird. I mean, I already knew it from other sources than reading the original book, and it's still really weird.

The Tin Man was a woodsman all his life, his father having been so before him. After his parents die (no foul play implied, just age) he decides to marry and falls in love with a beautiful Munchkin girl - it's not clear whether he is actually a Munchkin himself or not. She promises to marry him when he has enough money for a bigger house. But the girl lives with an old woman - not described as a relative of any kind - who is lazy and doesn't want the girl to marry and leave, she wants her to stay and be her caretaker. So the woman makes a deal with the Wicked Witch of the East - for two sheep and a cow the witch will prevent the marriage.

The Witch is an oppressive despot but she is happy to make deals too, apparently. I wonder what the exchange rate is for livestock in Oz.

The Witch puts an enchantment on the axe, quite a horrible one. While the Woodsman Who Is Not Yet Tin is working, his axe slips and chops off his left leg. Ouch!

"This at first seemed a great misfortune"...um,yeah. "For I knew a one-legged man could not do very well as a wood-chopper."

So, the immense physical trauma of chopping off one's leg wasn't top of the problem list, apparently, being able to continue to work is. Geez, and we talk about the stress of living in late-stage capitalism in the 21st century. I mean, I know it's a kids' book, Baum isn't going to go into gory detail about the real life effects of losing a limb, but still.

"So I went to a tin-smith and had him make me a new leg out of tin."

He seems pretty casual about this. Are tin prosthetics a common thing in Oz? We never see anyone else with them so we can only assume this was a singular inspiration on the Woodsman's part.

"My action angered the wicked Witch of the East, for she had promised the old woman I should not marry the pretty Munchkin girl. When I began chopping again my axe slipped and cut off my right leg. Again I went to the tinner, and again he made me a leg out of tin."

Okay, I can see why he would think the first time was a freak accident, but maybe start looking for a pattern? Also, the Woodsman must have crazy first aid/tourniquet skills, to lose a limb and then get himself to the tinsmith before dying from blood loss.

"After this the enchanted axe cut off my arms, one after the other; but, nothing daunted, I had them replaced with tin ones."

Okay, dude, we need to talk. I'm starting to think there is some back dealing between the Witch and the tinsmith here. Did you ever once consider getting a new axe?

"The wicked Witch then made the axe slip and cut off my head, and at first I thought that was the end of me. But the tinner happened to come along, and he made me a new head out of tin."

So. Many Questions. But collusion is looking a lot more likely all of a sudden.

"I thought I had beaten the wicked Witch then, and I worked harder than ever"

Dude! It's called medical leave! Oh wait, self employed.

"I little knew how cruel my enemy could be. She thought of a new way to kill my love for the beautiful Munchkin maiden, and made my axe slip again, so that it cut right through my body, splitting me into two halves."

You know, I'm no lumberjack but I've done some woodchopping, and I'm having a really hard time imagining the mechanics of cutting your torso in half by accident. I think this axe is at like animated +5 Axe of Dancing level. Also, it just occurs to me that there is never any mention of him getting a new axe. Is he still using the same axe that dismembered and beheaded him? I think he is. That is super creepy. But maybe not having a heart means not making morbid associations either...?

"Once more the tinner came to my help and made me a body of tin, fastening my tin arms and legs and head to it, by means of joints, so that I could move around as well as ever."

Maybe the Woodsman got a beeper at some point, like the way a senior citizen can summon 911 with one button if they fall or something. And this tinsmith is quite the craftsman, for sure.

"But, alas! I had now no heart, so that I lost all my love for the Munchkin girl, and did not care whether I married her or not. I suppose she is still living with the old woman, waiting for me to come after her."

Oh, that's cold. He doesn't love her anymore, but he remembers loving her and wishes he could again. No mention of what she thinks, of course? Would she want to marry a Tin Man just because of his emotional capacity? I'm getting Robocop flashbacks.

Also, I think we have a serious Ship of Theseus paradox here. Is he still the same person after every piece of him has been replaced? Where was his consciousness residing when his head was chopped off, and how did it return to his body?

I think he's a new thing with the memories of the biological entity he replaced bit by bit, like an uploaded personality from a cyberpunk novel. That would also explain why he never mentions his old name.

"My body shone so brightly in the sun that I felt very proud of it and it did not matter now if my axe slipped, for it could not cut me."

Okay, I just want to point out that Tin from Oz is more like adamantium than the tin we know. I can smash or cut through tin pretty easily. Even if he's solid tin all the way through instead of a hollow shell, he seems far more damage resistant than he should be.

Of course, he gets cocky and goes out to chop wood without bringing his oil can one day, and one rainfall later he's stuck until Dorothy rescues him. He says that when he was frozen his greatest loss was realizing the void from not having a heart, and he intends to ask the Munchkin girl to marry him when Oz gives him a new one. Again, no question about her views on the matter.

The Tin Man and Scarecrow once again declare the supremacy of their quest goals, and Dorothy wonders which is correct - what's more important, heart or brains? She decides it doesn't matter as long as she gets home to Aunt Em (aha, family is the reason to go home, explicitly stated!) and that her friends get what they want.

The chapter closes with Dorothy looking at her nearly empty basket and getting Seriously Concerned about Rations.

So, I knew about the history of the Tin Woodsman before reading this, but it's still just seriously bizarre.

Spoiler

Show

Seriously concerned about rations? She just ate today. While humans need water on a frequent basis, humans can actually go quite a long time without food. A week is doable and the record is 74 days.

Gotta seriously question the tin woodsman's pattern recognition; if the problem is with the axe maybe get a new axe?

Also there's some pretty impressive medical technology in Oz. if someone had their hand cut off you would expect them to bleed out quickly. But it doesn't seem to have bothered our woodsman at all.


Dorothy's getting quite a collection of golem companions, isn't she?

Still, it does make me wonder: Dorothy really is like the main character in an RPG, where NPCs just flat won't solve their problems on their own, and they need the player to come along and set things right.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[DavidSh]

Okay, I just want to point out that Tin from Oz is more like adamantium than the tin we know. I can smash or cut through tin pretty easily. Even if he's solid tin all the way through instead of a hollow shell, he seems far more damage resistant than he should be.

I think we can assume that this is tin-plated steel, not just tin. Tin by itself doesn't rust, as such. So, a question of the gauge of the steel.

[jayem]

If anything, I think it highlights that Oz isn't set in some specific time period, it's just a bizarre fantasy elsewhere existing in the now of the 1890s. Would they have telegraphs or hot air balloons? No, then they wouldn't be an isolated land no one has heard of. Do they have matches or sewing machines or aspirin or chewing gum (or any other invention of the mid-late 19th century)? Sure if it comes up.

Unfortunately for Baum, little girls knew Wireless Telegraphy was a thing that Oz was sure to have.

I can't remember how it goes exactly, but it's something like this "At the end of the last book, Oz had fallen down the Reicenbach falls. However thousands of little pains have pointed out that wireless signals will reach there, and Dorothy and her newly resident Aunt and Uncle have managed to send their story of how they met walking bookshelf that contains all the other books that I write but you won't read unless it's about Oz"

(I've since checked and it's the Patchwork Girl of Oz)

[Kish]

Actually, Baum had declared bankruptcy and wanted a justification to write more books in his best-selling series, so he was glad to have it pointed out to him that "wireless telegraphy" was a "good-enough" handwave for going back on his previously established "at the end of this book Oz was shut off forever from the outside world."

[Sapphire Guard]

Scarecrow's entire experience is of being stuck on that pole, he knows lots of things he shouldn't have any concept of. Alternatively, the farmer that painted him is a smoker, the wizard 'invented' matches, or any number of other justifications.

[pendell]

Scarecrow's entire experience is of being stuck on that pole, he knows lots of things he shouldn't have any concept of. Alternatively, the farmer that painted him is a smoker, the wizard 'invented' matches, or any number of other justifications.

Oh that's easy. His AI is an offline instance of a cloud-based system; they copied an instance down so it retains all the data it was trained on in the cloud but , now that it's isolated from the cloud and operating on new training material, is beginning to diverge from the original version.

And of course cloud-based tech exists in this world. After all, wouldn't you describe a house emerging from a tornado as 'downloaded from the cloud'?

Eh? Eh? Eh?

:Looks around at the dead silence:

I get it. I'll keep working in software and not go into standup comedy for at least another century.

Tongue-in-cheek ,

Brian P.

[PontificatusRex]

And of course cloud-based tech exists in this world. After all, wouldn't you describe a house emerging from a tornado as 'downloaded from the cloud'?

Boom! Like literally, Boom. Or Crash? Hard to say.