The Atheist Approach to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Alejandro Martínez Fernández College

“My name is Dorothy”, said the girl, “and I am going to the Emerald City, to ask the Great Oz to send my back to Kansas” (Baum 25). Worldwide readers could immediately relate the quote above to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) by L. Frank Baum. Basic features of fairy tales are present in The Wonderful wizard of Oz. For instance, Dorothy being an orphan – as many other kids in fairy tales – or the fight between god and evil. Moreover, the representation of the land of Oz as a lush and colourful place; quite the opposite of Kansas, which is described as a grey and desolate country, easily draws children’s attention to the magic world and characters that Baum describes.

However, as most of fairy tales, the narration conceals a relevant interpretation. According to Carol McGuirk essay’s “SF Intertextuality: Echoes of The Pilgrim's Progress in Baum's The Wizard of Oz and Burroughs's First "Mars" Trilogy”, there are few nexuses between John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678) and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. To start with, as McGuirk states, Dorothy symbolizes the characters described by Bunyan, Christian and Christiana. “For like Bunyan's Christian and Christiana, Baum's Dorothy Gale of Kansas” (McGuirk 544). They get involved...