Wicked (1995) (edit title/settings)

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

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• Elphaba Thropp (aka Elphie, Fae, Fabala, Auntie Witch, Wicked Witch of the West): Main character of the Book. The misunderstood Wicked Witch of the West from the classic tale the Wizard of Oz, Elphaba (later nicknamed the Wicked Witch of the West) is very intelligent, kind-hearted, and green. Elphaba was born with green skin; that makes her a target with bullies, but she doesn't let this discourage her. She's also an Animal (There's a difference between Animal and animal in Oz; An Animal is able to stand upright and has the ability of speech; an animal is a regular old animal, like a dog) rights activist, and doesn't exactly follow the ideals of the Oz government. Her character is best described using the quote, "...I call myself The Wicked Witch of the West now. As long as people are going to assume you're a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefits of it?"
• Galinda Upland (aka Glinda): Elphaba's roommate at Shiz University, who later becomes the Witch of the North. She hates Elphaba at first, but they later become close friends. The two are separated for twenty years when Elphaba goes into hiding. Galinda is part of the high society. Galinda in this book acts in a snobby and mean fashion, and is basically the opposite of Elphaba.
• Melena Thropp: Elphaba's mother. She was beautiful high born daughter of the Eminent Thropp who married a poor priest for love. She does not get along well with the other villagers. She is ashamed of how her daughter turned out and though she tries to love her despite her appearance she has trouble mustering up much motherly affection for her.
• Frex: A passionate unionist minister and Elphaba's father. He is so passionate about his faith he spends a lot of time travelling the countryside evangelizing the no name God. Because of this, he tends to neglect his wife and family even leaving his wife to go out evangelizing on the day she is giving birth to their child.
• Doctor Dillamond: Doctor Dillimond is a Goat (not a goat) who works towards Animal rights. Elphaba works as a sort of intern for him. He dies while she is at Shiz by murder (but rumor is quickly started he cut himself on the glass of his microscope.) He is a great doctor who has a reputation of intelligence and good moral standing.
• Nanny: The childhood (and adult) Nanny of Melena, and later Elphaba, Nessarose, Shell, and Liir.
• Turtle Heart: A kind hearted traveller from Quadling country. He is a glass blower by trade and possibly a seer and is travelling to Oz to see if he can gain an audience with the Ozma regent for he has forseen terrible things to come. He is travelling to see if he can convince the Ozma Regent to put a stop to these things before any damage is done. He comes across the home of Melena, Frex, and Elphaba on the journey to Oz and ends up staying for a time. All of the family is very fond of him.
• Nessarose Thropp (aka Nessa, Wicked Witch of the East, Emminent Thropp): Nessarose (later nicknamed the Wicked Witch of the East) is Elphaba's younger sister. She is often seen as the beautiful one of the two (although she was born without arms) because of her delicate appearance and demeanor.
• Madame Morrible (aka Horrible Morrible): The dean of Shiz University. She is very manipulative and not very fond of Elphaba because she is different, speaks her mind, and isn't afraid to challenge her authority. Madame Morroble seems to remind almost everyone of a large, frilly fish. Most students strongly dislike her.
• Fiyero Tigelaar (aka Yero): Prince of the Arjiki tribe in the Vinkus. He is a classmate of Elphaba's at Shiz.
• Master Boq: A boy from Munchkinland who grew up with Elphaba and attends Three Queens University. He is smitten with Galinda. Elphaba agrees to help him meet her so he can try to win her over. He is an admirer of Dr. Dillamond and he and Elphaba develop a friendship after he agrees to help Dr. Dillamond with his scientific research.
• Gillikin: A race of Ozians from the county in the north of Oz.
• The Wizard of Oz: The dictator of Oz who staged a coup and overthrew the Ozma Regent and took over control of Oz.
• Dorothy Gale: A little girl from Kansas whose house is picked up in a Tornado and lands on Nessarose, Elphaba's sister, The Wicked Witch of the East, as the Munchkins have come to call the Eminent Thropp who rules them. She has Nessa's shoes that Elphaba wants.
• Manek: Fiyero and Sarima's son.
• Oatsie: A woman who leads a caravan through the Vinkus.
• Crope: A friend of Elphaba and Glinda from Shiz. Met through Boq, who works with him at the library over the Summer.
• Sarima: Fiyero's wife, from whom Elphaba tirelessly attempts to receive forgiveness from.
• Gawnette: A towns person who runs a nursery in Rush Margins.
• Grommetik: A tik-tok creature owned by Madame Morrible.
• Chistery: A baby monkey saved by Elphaba.
• Killyjoy: A dog owned by the cook in Oatsie's caravan. Later becomes Elphaba's dog.
• Nastoya: Princess of the Scrow in the Vinkus.
• Tibbett: A friend of Elphaba and Glinda from Shiz. Met through Boq, who works with him at the library over the summer.
• Mother Yackle: A mysterious old woman who pops up at different points throughout Elphaba's life. Elphaba is constantly angered by the fact that Yackle often appears in the outskirts of all of the major events in her life.
• Ozma: The former ruler of Oz. A girl who is believed to be frozen somewhere until it is time for her to regain her power.
• Lurline: The fairy queen, possible creator of Oz (according to legend.) Lurlinists worship Lurline as their god.
• Miss Pfannee: Galinda's friend at Shiz.
• Malky: Elphaba's cat.
• Liir: A boy who leaves the mauntery with Elphaba.
• Sir Chuffrey: Glinda's husband. He is older and fairly wealthy.
• Irji: Fiyero and Sarima's son. Irji is known for his cowardly demeanor.
• Miss Shenshen: Galinda's friend at Shiz.
• Professor Nikidik: A professor of Life Sciences at Shiz. He becomes the professor after the death of Doctor Dillamond.
• Nor: The daughter of Fiyero and Sarima.
• Uncle Henry: Dorothy's uncle
• Shell: Shell is Elphaba and Nessarose's little brother. His mother died in childbirth but he is the only one considered "normal" in the family.
• Terrible Humbug: Add a description of this character.
• Gayelette: A sorceress
• Igo
• Bfee: A school girl at Shiz.
• Pastorius
• Cowardly Lion: an Animal that elphaba stood up for when he was a cub.
• Ama Clutch: Galinda's nanny.
• Great Oz: The wizard, the governing person of the land.
• Sister Bursar: Comparable to a nun.
• Superior Maunt: Comparable to a nun, the head nun.
• Miss Milla
• Nipp
• Quelala
• Avaric: A bossy, stuck up, rich student at Shiz
• Grine
• Stork
• Letta
• Miss Greyling
• Preenella
• Auntie Em: Dorothy's Aunt.
• Tin Woodman
• Ama Clipp: A school-girl's nanny at Shiz

Quotes edit see section history

• “Well, it's your garden, plant there what you choose and reap what you may.”

  Nanny

• “The answer, of course, is that the clock isn't meant to measure earthly time, but the time of the soul. Redemption and condemnation time. For the soul, each instant is always a minute short of judgement.”

  Frex

• “"Melena, she needs to get used to other children. She'll start talking a little bit if she sees that other chicks are talking.""Talking among children is an overrated concept."”

  Nanny & Melena

• “When goodness removes itself, the space it occupies corrodes and becomes evil, and maybe splits apart and multiplies. So every evil thing is a sign of the absence of deity.”

  Elphaba

• “"...nowadays so many people don't even believe in Lurline.""But they believe in evil still," said Galinda with a yawn. "Isn't that funny, that deity is passe but the attributes and implications of deity linger-"”

  Elphaba & Galinda

• “I just think, like our teachers here, that if ministers are effective, they're good at asking questions to get you to think. I don't think they're supposed to have the answers. Not neccesarily.”

  Elphaba

• “"I know this: The wickedness of men is that their power breeds stupidity and blindness."”

  Elphaba

• “If one could drown in the grass, thought Elphie, it might be the best way to die.”

  Elphaba

• “Was it an accident I saw that...or is it just that the world unwraps itself to you, again and again, as soon as you are ready to see it anew?”

  Fiyero

• “Either accept the burden of of leadership or turn it down, but either way make sure it's your choice in the matter, and not an accident of history, a martyrdom by default.”

  Elphaba, to Nessarose

• “They sparkled like diamonds and embers of blood, and thorny stars.”

  Witch in the beginning

• “A tyrant is terrible, but at least he or she imposes order. The anarchy that follows the deposition of a tyrant can be bloodier than before.”

  Elphaba

• “She's blinding the guests coming for dinner! Well, that's one way to avoid having to dust, I suppose.”

  Liir and Nanny

• “And girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the sidestepping of compromise. They need to know when they say something that they will never back down, ever, ever. It’s the compensation for a more limited scope of the world. Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on – or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the universe is changed, once again, for cold anger requires an eternal vigilance in all matters of slight and offense.”

  Sarima to Elphaba

• “Perhaps some underling who had no authority in the matter had an appetite for bloodbath. It’s so hard to get reliable help in the armed forces.”

• “The overdressed traveler betrays more interest in being seen than in seeing while the true traveler knows the novel world about her serves as the most appropriate accessory.”

  Galinda

• “I brought you his axe. I thought you might bewitch it and cause it to kill him." "Oh well, that wouldn't be very nice." "Very nice? No indeed it wouldn't be very nice Nessie."”

  Random woman, Nessarose, Elphaba

• “The Witch took on of Boq's children on her knee and clucked at it absentmindedly. She liked children no more than she ever had, but years of dealing with monkeys had given her an insight into the infant mentality she had never grasped before.”

• “Madam Morrible had a choice. No one was better suited than she to see that her students got an education and not a brainwashing. By hooking up with the Emerald City, she sold out all her students who believed that a liberal education meant learning to think for themselves.”

• “Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven, so you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it.”

• “I see myself there: the girl witness, wide-eyed as Dorothy. Staring at a world too horrible to comprehend, believing - by dint of ignorance and innocence - that beneath this unbreakable contract of guilt and blame there is always an older contract that may bind and release in a more salutary way. A more ancient precedent of ransom, that we may not always be tormented by our shame. Neither Dorothy nor young Elphaba can speak of this, but the belief of it is in both our faces...”

  Elphaba

• “A person who doesn't believe in the Unnamed God, or anything else, can't believe in a soul. If you could take the skewers of religion, those that riddle your frame, make you aware every time you move - if you could withdraw the scimitars of religion from your mental and moral systems - could you even stand? Or do you need religion as, say, the hippos in the Grasslands need the poisonous little parasites within them, to help them digest fiber and pulp?The history of peoples who have shucked off religion isn't an especially persuasive argument for living without it. Is religion itself - that tired and ironic phrase - the necessary evil? The idea of religion worked for Nessarose, it worked for Frex. There may be no real city in teh clouds, but the dreaming of it can enliven the spirit.”

  Elphaba

• “The Unnamed God, by virtue of its anonymity, can't ever be suspected of a surprise visit. And would we reocognize the Unnamed God if it knocked on our doors?”

Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Munchkinland: Elphaba's birthplace and starting point of the story.
• Crage Hall: Where the girls attending Shiz University reside.
• Emerald City: The Capitol of Oz.
• Shiz: A city in southwestern Gillikin, where Shiz University is located.
• Kiamo Ko: A large fortress in the Vinkus, currently held by Fiyero's family.

Organizations edit see section history

• The Gale Force: The Wizard's army.

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Glossary edit see section history

• Animal: Note that the term "Animal" is different from "animal", and refers to a sentient, talking animal.
• Pfaith: refers to the Pleasure faith, tied in to the mythos about the Kumbric Witch and the Time Dragon, and is somehow loosely related to the tik-tok creatures.
• Unionism: The Ozian religion based on the idea of one true God, known as the Unnamed God.
• Pfenix: Another word for the mythical bird that is greatly known as the phoenix.

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• Good versus Evil: Good vs. Evil is obviously one of the primary themes. But the twist -- unlike in "Wizard of Oz" -- is that this theme doesn't focus on a showdown between a hero and a super-villain. Rather, it is on good and evil residing within the same person -- Elphaba... the Wizard, Glinda, Nessa, etc. In you and me...
• Sexuality: Very sexual. Touches on adolescent curiosity and exploration as well as adult relationships.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Followed by Son of a Witch.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Gregory Maguire (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• New York Times Best Seller

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3563.A3535 W5 1995
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

This book is definitely an adult book. There are several chapters that deal with adult topics that a child should not read.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Fairy Tales
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Fantasy › Magic & Wizards

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Gregory Maguire's Official Website: Author Gregory Maguire's Official Website

More Books Like This edit see section history

Books That Influenced This Book edit see section history

Books Influenced by This Book edit see section history