Dorothy Gale
A young orphaned girl living on a farm in Kansas owned by her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. Life on the farm is hard work and offers little opportunity for excitement to the girl blossoming into womanhood. She expresses her intensifying desire to explore the world beyond the confines of Kansas through a wistful song about what wonders may lie at the other end of the rainbow. When the town’s richest and meanest citizen, Miss Gulch, obtains a legal order to take her closest friend—Toto, her loyal dog—away, she tries to save his life and pursue her reams by running away. As the dark skies an approaching storm arrive, however, she has changed her mind and is making a desperate bid to get back home. When a tornado drops from the clouds, everything undergoes a radical transformation.
Miss Gulch/The Wicked Witch of the West
Miss Gulch/The Wicked Witch of the West Miss Gulch is a skeletal old woman with a pinched face and a personality to match whose overreaction to Toto being in her garden is the stimulus for Dorothy attempting to run away which in turn caused her to be trapped outside the underground shelter when the twister hits. Miss Gulch’s socially-accepted form of wickedness in Kansas is transformed into outright black magic in Oz were hated Wicked Witch of the West bears a strong physical resemblance to the old crone. Except for the witch’s green skin, that is.
Hunk/The Scarecrow
Hunk is one the hired hands helping to work the farm in Kansas. When Dorothy gets to Oz, she meets a walking talking scarecrow who reminds her quite a bit of Hunk. The Scarecrow is eager to join Dorothy on her trek to meet the Wizard of Oz in the hopes that he might be able to fill in the missing gap in his construction where his brain should be.
Hickory/The Tin Man
Hickory is another farmhand who comes to see vaguely familiar in Oz. In that magical place, he takes the form of a woodsman made of metal who joines Dorothy and the Scarecrow to see if the Wizard can provide him with a heart.
Zeke/The Cowardly Lion
Back in Kansas, Zeke is the most shy and nervous member of the trio of farmhands. In Oz, he takes the form of a Lion who hides his own timidity behind expressions of false bravado. He wants the Wizard to supply him with courage so that he might express actual bravado.
Glinda the Good Witch
Glinda is the only significant person with whom Dorothy comes into contact in Oz that has no counterpart back home in Kansas. Her justification for her title Glinda the Good is that only ugly witches can be wicked. So there’s that. Otherwise, Glinda seems to make life more difficult for Dorothy that it should be by rashly using her powers to transform the ruby slippers on the feet of the Wicked Witch of the East who died when the farmhouse fell right on top of her after the twister which sucked it up in Kansas dissipated. The Wicked Witch of the West had long desired her sister’s shoes, but once transferred to Dorothy’s feet, she had no power to get them back. Thus her decision to terrorize the foreigner and her three companions for the rest of the movie.
Professor Marvel/The Wizard
When Dorothy makes her run for the border with Toto, she comes acros an old carny worker whose act was telling the future. He convinces Dorothy that her act was selfish and showed a lack of concern for the people who love her, thus changing Dorothy's plans and sending her headlong into the path of the tornado. In Oz, the Professor appears as a number of different characters, foremost among the being the Wizard of Oz. Unfortunately, he proves to be just as much an actor there as he was back home.
Auntie Em
Dorothy's Auntie Em is the exactly opposite of Glinda: she has no counterpart in Oz .She is the only person from Kansas other than Dorothy to show up there, however, albeit in a vision conjured by the Wicked Witch of the West.
