Wizard Of Oz Movie Vs Book

1068 Words5 Pages
Of the plentiful differences between the children’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum and MGM’s 1939 Technicolor film, The Wizard of Oz, the Wizard of Oz himself exhibits altered actions in the film compared to the book. His dissimilar proceedings correlate to different ideas that are conveyed to the audiences of the respective media. In the book, the wizard gifts the Scarecrow, Lion, and Tin Woodman with direct internal constituents that the comrades so desperately desire – a brain, a heart, and courage. Contrastingly in the film, the wizard gifts the comrades with physical, external tokens that represent accomplishments from the constituents (Pawlett and Dhanda 128). In the book, emphasis is placed on the idea that the qualities…show more content…
To the Scarecrow, the wizard remarks that a brain is a ‘mediocre commodity’ and back where he’s from, people attend universities to become great thinkers and they become deep thinkers even though they have no more brains than Scarecrow. And with that, he gifts the Scarecrow with a ‘Th.D.’ – a doctorate of ‘thinkology’ (Paige). A similar line of thought expressed both in the book and the film may be that the presence of a brain does not directly correlate to knowledge and intelligence. However, unlike in the book where Oz tells the Scarecrow of how he only needs to experience the world to gain knowledge, the Oz in the film only presents his gift without any words of wisdom on how to continue expanding his knowledge after acknowledging his intelligence. Additionally, Oz tells the Lion that what he is lacking is not courage but wisdom and back where he’s from, people who are considered heroes have no more courage than he does. With that, he ceremoniously gifts the Lion with a medal that has ‘Courage’ engraved on it. The Lion, also, is not gifted with further guidance on how to be courageous or on even what courage is. Finally, Oz informs the Tin Woodman that he is lucky to lack a heart, and hearts cannot be practical until they have become unbreakable. The Tin Woodman, however, still desires a heart and Oz declares that what he needs is a testimonial for his kindness – a ticking heart-shaped watch. The wizard actually provides some wisdom for the Tin Woodman by telling him that a heart is not judged by how much it loves, but how much it is loved by others. The interaction between Oz and the Tin Woodman follows the book relatively closely and due to Oz’s words of wisdom at the end, may be an even more meaningful interaction than the one in the book because a positive message about the heart is lacking in the
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