The Demented Wizard of Oz

So I stumbled upon this site at www.audiobooksforfree.com. Anyone who knows me knows that if it’s free it’s for me and audio books usually cost at least $25. The selection is not that great but there are a lot of classics on there and this ought to keep me entertained for a while. Out of curiosity and because I haven’t seen the movie in so long, I’ve been slowly listening to the original Wizard of Oz at work. This must be a pretty tiny book because the audio is only about 3 and a half hours long. It seems like the average novel has more like 20 hours of audio. I’m a little over halfway through now and I’m actually kind of shocked and disturbed for several reasons.

First of all, you know how they say that the book is always better than the movie? Simply not true. This book is awful! A lot of parts are a lot different from the movie and thank goodness because there are some truly ludicrous storylines in this thing. There is also some stuff that is incredibly violent and that maybe kids shouldn’t be reading. For instance, do you know how the tin man really became the tin man? The Wicked Witch of the East put a curse on him that caused him to hack off all of his body parts one by one, then his head and then whatever was left of his torso after that until a tin worker came along and found this bloody mess and saved his ass by turning him to tin. I’m not kidding! It’s kind of demented really.

Then there are all these crazy violent battle scenes in the book. The cheerful, sweet Tin Man you know from the movie is pretty much more like the Terminator in the book and decapitates whatever he can get his axe on, including dozens and dozens of wolves, a poor wild cat just trying to catch a little mouse for dinner and even himself! The Scarecrow isn’t much better though. I just listened to a scene where a bunch of crows try to peck him and he kills like 50 of them by squeezing and twisting their necks until they die. I’m not making any of this up… read it yourself if you don’t believe me. It’s making me kind of sick because I don’t like woodland creatures being slaughtered by the hundreds like this. This book is kind of evil and I’m afraid what gruesome and disturbing thing these supposedly loveable characters are going to do next.
I want to know what was going on in the head of the crazy dude who decided 70 years ago that this was the best material to use for the next great family musical. I also want to know how it is possibly possible that it actually worked out in the end.