This essay analyzes the influences of different characters on Elphaba's life journey in Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked. It discusses how her college professor Dr. Dillamond's apparent murder had a significant impact by pushing her towards a life of activism for Animal rights. The essay also notes that other minor characters impacted her in smaller ways, such as certain decisions she made. In the end, as she dies from being doused with water, Elphaba's final memory is of all the faces that affected her path from a preacher's daughter to the Wicked Witch of the West.
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This essay analyzes the influences of different characters on Elphaba's life journey in Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked. It discusses how her college professor Dr. Dillamond's apparent murder had a significant impact by pushing her towards a life of activism for Animal rights. The essay also notes that other minor characters impacted her in smaller ways, such as certain decisions she made. In the end, as she dies from being doused with water, Elphaba's final memory is of all the faces that affected her path from a preacher's daughter to the Wicked Witch of the West.
This essay analyzes the influences of different characters on Elphaba's life journey in Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked. It discusses how her college professor Dr. Dillamond's apparent murder had a significant impact by pushing her towards a life of activism for Animal rights. The essay also notes that other minor characters impacted her in smaller ways, such as certain decisions she made. In the end, as she dies from being doused with water, Elphaba's final memory is of all the faces that affected her path from a preacher's daughter to the Wicked Witch of the West.
Copyright:
Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
This essay analyzes the influences of different characters on Elphaba's life journey in Gregory Maguire's novel Wicked. It discusses how her college professor Dr. Dillamond's apparent murder had a significant impact by pushing her towards a life of activism for Animal rights. The essay also notes that other minor characters impacted her in smaller ways, such as certain decisions she made. In the end, as she dies from being doused with water, Elphaba's final memory is of all the faces that affected her path from a preacher's daughter to the Wicked Witch of the West.
Copyright:
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Theme Essay
In Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, time turns back and readers are transported to a different
kind of Oz than Frank L. Baum remembers: before the wizard ruled, before the man of tin was
metallic, and before the loathsome witch was wicked. Maguire paints a delicate yet frightening
depiction of the childhood and young adulthood of an opinionated, passionate, and essentially
good girl named Elphaba, who grows to be that Wicked Witch. This novel proves that Elphaba’s
turn for the worse is no hand dealt by fate; it is the characters she interacts with along the way
that change her, encourage her to become who she became. Elphaba’s case is perfect proof that
one individual can change the course of another’s life.
Elphaba’s college years are probably the most eventful as far as personages go, meeting
many teachers and student alike who are drawn to her, or she to them. Dr. Dillamond, a Goat
professor at the University of Shiz (Goat being capitalized to indicate that this animal has human
qualities, such as speech and thought), quickly takes her under his hoof, so to speak, employing
her a scribe for his research. Enraptured by his discoveries, Elphaba goes above and beyond,
recruiting other students to help the Doctor discover the differences between animals and
Animals in hope of reversing the newly applied restrictions on Animal rights. However, with the
apparent murder of Doctor Dillamond, deemed as an accident by the school’s administration, the
research is permanently stopped, with no one qualified enough to continue his studies. This
tragic “accident” sends Elphie into her first downward spiral, leaving the college and devoting
her life to the Animal Relief League as an undercover agent. She once says to her short-term
lover Fiyero of her dedication to the cause, “I am married, just not to a man” (Maguire 245). Dr.
Dillamond, even in death, proved to alter her life in a drastic manner, leading her down a path of
violent opposition to central authority and a general resentment for rules. Even when the phase as an extreme Animal activist is through, her love for Animals is evident throughout the novel,
showing the lasting effects of Dillamond and his research.
While some characters similar to Doctor Dillamond influenced Elphaba heavily towards
the path of destruction and her eventual demise, other characters swayed her on a smaller scale,
affecting a single decision she made or a sentence she said. When the foreigner Dorothy arrives
and dumps the water on Elphaba’s head, the woman’s life flashes before her not in events, but in
faces. Elphie recalls as her last memory, “A ring of expectant faces before the light dims… they
become others… and the ones whose stories are over… and the ones who fell to the Wizard…
and the creatures of makeshift lives… the Goddess of Gifts last” (Maguire 514-515).
In the final drowning moments of her life, Elphaba remembers every face and name that
affected her, some of those she had not seen for many years. The lasting effects friends, family,
critics, and colleagues had on her changed one young preacher’s daughter with a birth defect into
one of the most infamous people in Oz. Individuals can alter the course of another one’s life,
making every encounter an inerasable mark on someone else’s slate.
