Utopian Tension in L. Frank Baum's Oz(*)
1998; Penn State University Press; Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2154-9648
Autores Tópico(s)Diverse Education Studies and Reforms
ResumoNumerous scholars have noted Utopian aspects of the society depicted in the fourteen Oz books written by L. Frank Baum between 1900 and 1920.1 These aspects include, among others, a communal sharing of food, the elimination of money and poverty, a dearth of punishment, an absence of greed reminis cent of Sir Thomas More, and the virtual elimination of death or disease. The Tin Woodman, for example, declares in The Road to Oz, We have no rich, and no poor; for what one wishes the others all try to give him, in order to make him happy, and no one in all Oz cares to have more than he can use (165). Most scholars, however, have dismissed Baum's Utopian society as a fairy tale paradise rife with inconsistencies and superficialities. As a result, they have neglected to explore the central political and philosophical concerns of his works: the conflict between the individual and the and the thorny problem of how to create a unified and harmonious society out of a rag-tag assortment of wildly diverse individuals. In the Oz works, Baum continually grapples with two political issues debated in the United since its inception: 1) the conflict over whether to give primacy to individ ual rights and freedom or highest priority to community life and the good of collectivities (Taylor 1985, 182); and 2) the problem of how to create a unified that still recognizes the fundamentally multiracial and multi-ethnic nature of the United States (Gordon and Newfield 77). In developing the of Oz, Baum seems to be trying to do the impossible: to create a world that combines the pastoral and artistic features of William Morris's Utopia with the technological and urban advantages of Edward Bellamy's; to fashion a Utopia that is simultaneously egalitarian and authoritarian; and to establish a society that values and protects individual rights, interests, and freedoms, as well as cultural multiplicity, at the same time as it promotes the value of a unified state to which individuals owe allegiance, a state created E Pluribus Unum. While grappling with these seemingly irreconcilable polarities and displaying a satiric awareness of some of the problems within his seemingly idyllic community, Baum manages to
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