Page "Land of Oz" Paragraph 181

In his revisionist Oz novels Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West, Son of a Witch, and A Lion Among Men, Gregory Maguire portrays a very different version of the Land of Oz.

Maguire's Oz is not Baum's utopia, but a land troubled by political unrest and economic hardship.

One political issue in Maguire's novels is the oppression of the Animals ( Maguire distinguishes speaking Animals from non-speaking animals by the use of initial capital letters ).

There are many religious traditions in Maguire's Oz, including Lurlinism ( which regards the Fairy Lurline as Oz's creator ), Unionism, which worships the Unnamed God, and the pleasure faiths which had swept Oz during the time that the witches were at Shiz.

An example of the pleasure faiths were tic-toc ( where creatures were enchanted to tell secrets or the future and run by clockwork ), and sorcery.