Most people who experience Wicked are most
familiar with the hit Broadway musical, indeed it was my first exposure to the
material and the theater as a whole.
There is this inherent assumption that the musical is at least
semi-faithful to Gregory Maguire’s Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked
Witch of the West, but outside of the subject matter and most of the
characters, it’s quite a different beast entirely. This is mainly down to the perspective of the
two works, the musical following Glinda after the death of Elphaba, the Wicked
Witch of the West, while the novel is all on the other side, following Elphaba
and essentially her family before her birth.
The first fifth of the novel chronicles Elphaba’s conception and birth,
as well as her early childhood where the reader can get an insight into what
her family was like. The book, through
rambling sections and diversions becomes a treatise on morality and what being wicked
actually means, but while the musical gives a more definitive answer Maguire
makes the critical decision to leave it ambiguous to if Elphaba was good in the
end. There’s also ambiguity if she
survived her accidental melting, ending with lines which have appeared
previously asking: “And there the wicked old witch stayed for a good long
time. And did she ever come out? Not
yet.”. This little call and response
implies that Elphaba might be alive in the end, but still broken as the final
section of the book is one which sees her distraught and broken about losing
everyone she ever loved. The final section
faces her a situation which is what it seems on face value, not some grand
conspiracy of genocide or murders, but a little girl accidentally killed her
sister and wishes to make amends, and that is her downfall.
Maguire’s text is perhaps just as witty as the musical’s
script, delving into philosophy, psychology, and politics, examining the nature
of wickedness at the core and shifting the perspective off what the reader may
expect. The source is not the 1939 film The
Wizard of Oz, only definitively taking Elphaba’s green skin from that film,
but L. Frank Baum’s original novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz which is
already a darker children’s novel and some of the sequels which get even
darker. This makes the adult leap to Wicked,
which includes sex, several affairs, sexual assault, and an implied polyamorous
relationship, all not intended to be read by children which is perhaps why people
struggle with this novel. Underneath it
all the wit is there, the most interesting things coming where the musical
neglected to go, such as Madame Morrible’s continual stalking of Elphaba,
Elphaba’s estranged son, the fact that Elphaba and her sister were both from
different fathers and not her father, and the musings on the nature of
religion. Elphaba’s father instead of
being governor of Munchkinland as in the musical, is a religious official and throughout
Elphaba’s disbelief in the soul becomes a driving factor, turning her to righteous
causes against the bigotry and frankly outdated ways of Oz. Doctor Dillamond, in the musical made mute
and the representation of Elphaba’s anger, serves the same purpose in the novel
but is murdered halfway through and that is what sets Elphaba, as well as Galinda
off. Galinda changes her name not in a
spur of the moment decision, but a genuine act of reverence to a Goat she cared
for. Glinda is still flighty and never
goes against being a socialite, but there is a depth to her (again the musical
is from her perspective), and there isn’t that final meeting between the two.
There is something so different about the book is that
the rest of the characters are intentionally awful, Nessarose being the spoiled
child that she is and ruling with an iron fist, loving the idea that she is the
Wicked Witch of the East, a third sibling who follows the religious nature of
the parents. Fiyero being an actual
prince and less flighty (there’s another male character who ends up being not
important) and his affair and son by Elphaba, Liir, is perhaps some of the most
emotional points of the novel. Overall, Wicked
is one of those books that perhaps meanders and isn’t for everybody, but it is something
of an experience. It needs to be read as
a biography with not a definitive end with resolution because like many lives,
it’s one left unfinished. 8/10.
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