What Dorothy Learned

by Robert Willey, Th.D.

The Wizard of Oz is a perennial favorite, sentimental, inspiring, and cherished for its simple truths. Going a little deeper, others have uncovered themes in the story revealing a political allegory. What interests me is what happened after the movie ended, following the clues that the story was not going to end happily ever after.

On the surface the moral is that "there's no place like home." This is Dorothy's realization, which allows her to return to Kansas, where she vows to stay forever. Things do change, however, not always for the best, and more swiftly than she could have imagined.

What Dorothy Learned

The world is a cruel place.

After everything that has happened the witch has her revenge: Miss Elmira Gulch, the Gale's neighbor, returns only hours after Dorothy regains consciousness, gathers Toto up, takes him away, and has him destroyed the same day. However, things look different depending on where you stand. Miss Gulch was a cat lover and Toto terrorized her cat and bit her on the leg. There was even some evidence that he might have been rabid. Elmira died years later of a heart attack. In her will she created a trust to care for abandoned and mistreated kitties.

You can't trust anybody.

Dorothy was always gullible and accepted things at face value. At the beginning of the story she was taken in by the Professor's fortune telling and returned to the farm to check on Auntie Em.

Unfortunately for the family, Professor Marvel stayed on for a few days with the Gales to "make sure the little girl recovered OK" and swindelled the Gales out of their farm. Uncle Henry's Alzheimers disease was already beginning at the beginning of the story:

Miss Gulch: What's she done? I'm all but lame from the bite on my leg.
Henry: You mean she bit ya?
Miss Gulch: No, her dog.
Henry: Oh, she bit her dog, eh?

Henry drifted off within the year. Auntie Em suffered from severe arthritis and finally committed suicide. It took a long time for Dorothy to come to grips with all of this. She felt as if she had created this misery for her family, since she had given the Professor an opportunity to insert himself into their family life. The Professor died in his sleep many years later.

There are better places than home.

After the farm was taken away and her Aunt and Uncle departed, Dorothy moved to California. She found the west coast as colorful as Oz and was glad to be away from the sepia tones of Kansas. She was continuously taken advantage of until she developed street smarts. People who knew her through her adolescence say that they never heard her laugh. Over time she developed a wry, ironic sense of humor.

Dorothy's strength as a child had always been her singing and dancing, so she figured she would try to make in the movies. Her professional and personal lives had their ups and downs. She married five times, had emotional problems, abused Benzedrine, and died of an overdose of sleeping pills. In the autopsy it was discovered that a brain tumor had formed where she had been struck unconscious during the tornado.

There are unlikely winners.

The only ones who really came out well were the Munchkins. They continued to live, laugh, and love happily in Dorothy's dreams.
You don't know how someone's life really is until it's over.

Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, seemed like she was leading a charmed life in Dorothy's imagination, but is not needed anymore once the the wicked witches were gone. She became quite sedentary and developed hardening of the arteries.

Dorothy never found any friends in real life like she had in her dreams.

She could never get back that feeling of first opening the door on Oz.