1. Looking at the World Through Green Colored Glasses

He opened the big box, and Dorothy saw that it was filled with spectacles of every size and shape. All of them had green glasses in them. The Guardian of the gates found a pair that would just fit Dorothy and put them over her eyes… When they were on, Dorothy could not take them off had she wished, but of course she did not want to be blinded by the glare of the Emerald City, so she said nothing.

– L. Frank Baum,The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

I just mean, Glinda, is it possible we could be living our entire adult lives under someone’s spell?

–Maguire,Wicked

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.

–Franklin D. Roosevelt, Radio address, October 26, 1939

The blockbuster Broadway musicalWicked1 opens with the celebration of a death. As the curtain rises, the stage fills with actors singing in unison about the defeat of an enemy of all the people. Their wild, exuberant chorus echoes throughout the theater:

Good News! She’s Dead!

The Witch of the West is dead!

The Wickedest Witch there ever was,

The enemy of all of us here in Oz, Is dead!

Good News!

Good News!2

Of course, the audience recognizes her by name – the Wicked Witch of the West – a woman so wicked that the adjective is part of her name. We know her as the enemy of the good people of Oz, the wondrously colorful land of the classic movie3 to which Dorothy of black and white Kansas is transported via twister and a bump on the head. Those of us of a certain age remember our excitement when, in the deep silence after the tornado, Dorothy slowly opened the door of her damaged house to glimpse the world beyond the rainbow. The profusion of color dazzled us, and we were unsurprised to learn that while this world contained extreme goodness, the evil here was more intense as well.

Among my favorite moments from the movie is the gruesome melting of the Wicked Witch. As she dies slowly, the Witch rubs her bony hands together and cries, “Who ever thought a little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?”4 Dorothy seemed so meek and powerless up to that point, and the Witch so ruthlessly evil. I can still recall the fear I felt as the Witch pursued Dorothy and her friends through the corridors, the monkeys screeching wildly behind her. I agreed with the Witch: How could a little girl defeat such wickedness? I was terrified. But the forces of good, however puny, emerged from the battle victorious. I was catapulted from deathly fear to joyous celebration as fast as it takes a little girl to throw a pail of water, and I couldn’t have been happier. When Dorothy returns home safely to discover that the evil she encountered was only a dream, it made my world feel a bit safer, too. It is a movie ending I have savored all my life.