Wicked!

So I recently found out that my brother had bought the  book Wicked a couple of years back so I decided to read it in camp cos the plot sounded interesting. Managed to finish reading it this week and I quite liked the entire thing! It reads like a literature text; the starting parts were a little difficult to access, but after that the themes become more apparent.

Its essentially the “untold story of the Wicked Witch of the West”, of what was happening in the imagined world of Oz before Dorothy and her friends travelled it in the childhood epic The Wizard of Oz. This much you can find on Wikipedia, but I feel that beneath all the words and meandering plot, it deals largely with the definition of the word and its title, “wicked”. What it means to be wicked, or perceived as being wicked.

There is the entire character interplay between the two wicked witches and the ‘good’ witch, and the stark irony that the three of them were childhood friends. So you get to see how each turned out, but i believe that at the end of the day, each of the characters could be guilty of the adjective “wicked”. I guess that’s just another lesson in human character; accepting that each individual is fundamentally flawed, even if one might be socially accepted or deemed “good”. By that argument, it is then also important to note that no person is, or ever can be, wholly evil, per se. At the end of the day, no one can judge the actions of anyone else without understanding the whole story, and to jump to hasty conclusions would only serve to highlight one’s pretentious and superficial nature.

The ‘untold story’ has always had its appeal. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys covered that of the Creole heiress Antoinette Mason, perceived and interpreted as a ‘madwoman’ in Emily Bronte’s Jane Eyre, granting her a voice, and ultimately allowing readers to come to their own conclusion. In the same way, Gregory Maguire engages the readers through granting them the volition to choose and decide for themselves. Fundamentally flawed, yes. But inherently evil? I believe not. 

Can’t wait for the musical!