Wicked (Maguire novel)

Maguire began contemplating the nature of evil while living in London in the early 1990s. He noticed that while the problem of evil had been explored from many different perspectives, those perspectives were seldom synthesized together.[1] He wondered whether calling a person evil might be enough to cause a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"If everyone was always calling you a bad name, how much of that would you internalize? How much of that would you say, all right, go ahead, I'll be everything that you call me because I have no capacity to change your minds anyway so why bother. By whose standards should I live?"[2]

He was also inspired by the 1993 murder of James Bulger, in which both victim and perpetrators were young children.

"Everyone was asking: how could those boys be so villainous? Were they born evil or were there circumstances that pushed them towards behaving like that? It propelled me back to the question of evil that bedevils anybody raised Catholic."[3]

Up to that point strictly a children's author, Maguire had difficulty finding an effective way to write about evil, since in his mind, there were no truly evil characters in children's literature. In what he later described as "the one great revelation of my life," Maguire realized that there were in fact villains in children's books; however, they were usually written as one-dimensional stock characters in order to provoke a quick emotional reaction from young readers. Wondering whom to write about, he envisioned the Wicked Witch of the West, as played by Margaret Hamilton in the MGM film, delivering her iconic line, "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog too!"[4] Maguire had a lifelong fascination with The Wizard of Oz, both Baum's original novel and the film, which he watched every year during its annual broadcast.[1][5] He decided to tell the Wicked Witch's life story using the same large scale and broad moral messages found in the novels of Charles Dickens.[3]

In the Land of Oz, minister’s wife Melena Thropp is raped by a mysterious stranger, who drugs her with a potion from a green bottle. Nine months later, Melena gives birth to a daughter, Elphaba. Elphaba has green skin, sharp teeth, a savage demeanor, and a fear of water. The story details Elphaba’s difficult childhood and rivalry with her sister Nessarose before flashing forward 16 years to show Elphaba arriving at boarding school in the city of Shiz.

Elphaba meets her roommate, the social climber Galinda, and the two do not get along initially. Elphaba is far more interested in the cause of Animal rights. (In Oz, sentient Animals are distinguished by the capital letter and hold civil rights equal to humans.) Her biology professor Doctor Dillamond, himself a Goat, informs the class that, under the reign of the Wizard of Oz, Animals are being discriminated against. Elphaba develops a deep passion for Dillamond's movement and Dillamond becomes a mentor for her.

Dillamond is killed on the orders of Madame Morrible, headmistress of the women’s college and a puppet of the Wizard. Galinda adopts Dillamond's mispronunciation of her name, Glinda, to memorialize him and throws herself into her studies. Through Madame Morrible's manipulation, Glinda decides to study Sorcery. Elphaba and Glinda travel to the Emerald City, where they meet the Wizard and plead the case of the Animals. The Wizard dismisses their concerns and Elphaba decides to take matters into her own hands.

Five years later, Elphaba reconnects with former schoolmate Fiyero, now a Prince with three children, and the two begin an illicit affair. When Elphaba attempts to assassinate Madame Morrible, Fiyero is arrested by the Wizard's secret police force, taken away, and assumed murdered. In her grief, Elphaba falls into a coma which lasts for almost a year.

Elphaba goes to the Vinkus, where Fiyero was prince, and meets his wife and children at the castle Kiamo Ko. She brings along a boy named Liir. While she claims no relation to Liir, it is strongly hinted that he is her child by Fiyero. While staying at the castle, Elphaba begins to study a mysterious book of spells called a 'Grimmerie.' She is the only Ozian able to read its language.

Elphaba gets a letter from her father Frex, asking her to come help him with Nessarose, who has taken Elphaba's position as ruler of Munchkinland. When she arrives, she discovers Nessarose has become a witch. Nessarose promises to give Elphaba her enchanted silver shoes after she dies. When she returns to Kiamo Ko, she finds the Wizard’s troops have taken Fiyero's family prisoner.

Seven years later, a storm visits Munchkinland, dropping a farmhouse on Nessarose and killing her. The farmhouse's passengers are a little girl named Dorothy Gale and her dog, Toto. Glinda sends Dorothy off with Nessarose's shoes for fear of their power igniting a civil war in Munchkinland. Elphaba becomes furious with Glinda, as the shoes were rightfully hers. She goes to the Wizard to bargain for the release of Nor, the last survivor of Fiyero's family, but the Wizard refuses to make any agreements.

Some time after returning to Kiamo Ko, Elphaba finds out that Dorothy and a few friends are heading there to kill her under the Wizard's orders. When Dorothy arrives, she tells Elphaba that while the Wizard sent her to kill the witch, Dorothy came to apologize for killing her sister. Furious that Dorothy is asking for the forgiveness she herself has been denied, Elphaba waves her burning broom in the air and inadvertently sets her skirt on fire. Dorothy throws a bucket of water on her to save her. Instead the water kills her, melting her away to nothing but a puddle.

Dorothy returns to the Wizard with the green potion bottle. He recognizes the bottle as the potion that he used to drug Elphaba's mother Melena, showing that the Wizard is Elphaba’s father. The Wizard departs the Emerald City mere hours before a coup would have overthrown and killed him. The book ends with political chaos reigning over most of Oz.

• Elphaba Thropp: The protagonist of the book, Elphaba is a green-skinned girl who later becomes known as the Wicked Witch of the West. Later in the book, it is revealed that she is the daughter of The Wizard. The Wicked Witch of the West is not given a name in Baum's novels; Maguire derived the name Elphaba from Baum's initials, LFB.[3]
• Galinda Arduenna Upland (later Glinda): Elphaba's roommate at Shiz University, who eventually becomes the Good Witch of the North. She hates Elphaba at first, but they later become close friends.
• Nessarose Thropp: Elphaba's younger sister, who eventually becomes known as "the Wicked Witch of the East." Nessarose was born without arms, but is extremely beautiful, causing Elphaba to resent her.
• Fiyero Tigelaar: The prince of the Arjiki tribe, in the Vinkus. He meets Elphaba at Shiz and later has an affair with her while she is involved in the resistance movement against the Wizard of Oz.
• The Wizard of Oz: The book's main antagonist. The Wizard is a human who came to Oz from Earth in a hot air balloon. He was originally seeking the Grimmerie, but discovered he could orchestrate a coup d'état and take power for himself.
• Madame Morrible: Headmistress of Shiz University's Crage Hall, which Elphaba and Galinda attend, and a behind-the-scenes power broker in Ozian politics.
• Dr. Dillamond: Elphaba's mentor and favorite professor at Shiz. A Goat who is later assassinated as part of the Wizard's campaign against sentient Animals.
• Melena Thropp: The mother of Elphaba, Nessarose, and their brother Shell
• Frexspar: Melena's husband, a traveling minister

Wicked is on its face a revisionist parallel novel for The Wizard of Oz. The Independent compared it to Wide Sargasso Sea and Wild Wood as part of "a fascinating sub-genre of novels that revisit well-known stories as much in the spirit of criticism as homage."[14] While previous authors had accepted the existing moral framework of the Oz stories, Wicked showed affection for the originals while simultaneously questioning everything they stood for. Maguire presents a sympathetic view of a villainous character by detailing her life story and helping the reader understand how "an innocent if rather green and biting child" can become "a still moralistic terrorist."[8] He also transformed the Land of Oz itself, changing what he saw as an insular, parochial world into one where different groups and their political agendas intersect and overlap.[9]

Wicked received mostly positive reviews. Publishers Weekly called it a "fantastical meditation on good and evil, God and free will" which combined "puckish humor and bracing pessimism."[15] Kirkus Reviews called it "A captivating, funny, and perceptive look at destiny, personal responsibility, and the not-always-clashing beliefs of faith and magic." Library Journal recommended the book to "good readers who like satire, and love exceedingly imaginative and clever fantasy." The Los Angeles Times favorably compared Wicked with other "fantasy novels of ideas" such as Gormenghast and Dune.[16]

The New York Times was a notable outlier, criticizing the novel's strident politics and moral relativism. Reviewer Michiko Katutani argued that Maguire "shows little respect for Baum's original story." Wicked, she felt, "turns a wonderfully spontaneous world of fantasy into a lugubrious allegorical realm, in which everything and everyone is labeled with a topical name tag."[13]

In 2003, the novel was adapted as the Broadway musical Wicked by composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz and librettist Winnie Holzman. The musical was produced by Universal Pictures and directed by Joe Mantello, with musical staging by Wayne Cilento. The Broadway production has inspired long-running productions in Chicago, London's West End, San Francisco, and Los Angeles in the United States, as well as Germany and Japan. It was nominated for ten Tony Awards, winning three, and is the 5th longest-running Broadway show in history, with over 7,000 performances. The original Broadway production starred Idina Menzel as Elphaba and Kristin Chenoweth as Glinda.[17]

In a 2009 interview, Maguire stated that he had sold the rights to ABC to make an independent non-musical TV adaptation of Wicked. It would not be based on Winnie Holzman's script.[18] On January 9, 2011, Entertainment Weekly reported that ABC would be teaming up with Salma Hayek and her production company to create a TV miniseries of Wicked based solely on Maguire's novel.[19] The miniseries never entered production.

In September 2010, Filmshaft disclosed that Universal Pictures was beginning work on a film adaptation of the stage musical.[20] In December 2012, following the success of Les Misérables,[21][22] Marc Platt, also a producer of the stage version, announced the film was going ahead,[23] later confirming the film was aiming for a 2016 release.[24] Universal announced in 2016 that the film would be released in theaters on December 22, 2021, with Stephen Daldry directing.[25] After production was shut down during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic,[26] Daldry left the production due to scheduling conflicts[27] and was replaced by Jon M. Chu.[26] Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande were cast as Elphaba and Galinda, with rehearsals set to begin in July 2022.[28] In April 2022, it was announced that the film will be released in two parts, on Christmas Day in 2024 and 2025.[29]

• GregoryMaguire.com - the author's official website, which includes a discussion forum.
• Wicked the novel and Wicked the musical details on the official Stephen Schwartz fan site
• Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West study guide