Episode Four: Thrilling Air Adventures!
The heroes gather up a weird assortment of junk -- sofas, a broom, leaves from the royal Palm Tree, and the stuffed head of a deer-like animal called a Gump. They bind all this stuff together with clothesline and then Tip uses the remaining Powder of Life to animate it. Oz enters the Air Age as they pile aboard and the Gump takes to the sky!
I expect the flying Gump is L. Frank Baum's attempt to be topical. The Wright Brothers made their first successful flight in 1903, and by 1904 they were demonstrating their machine to potential customers. Other air pioneers like Glenn Curtiss, Louis Bleriot, and Alberto Santos-Dumont were building their own flyers (often improving on the Wrights' work). Air travel was no longer the future, it was now.
This points up something which one notices throughout the Oz books. There is none of the technophobia which pervades the fantasies of Tolkein, Lewis, and their legions of imitators. Oz blends technology and magic seamlessly. Its technological marvels (flying machines, robots, cyborgs) are magically-powered, while its magical wonders depend heavily on tools and devices. Magic and technology are not opposed, nor is either one at all "unnatural" or transgressive.
Baum's blending of science and magic only increases through the series as he becomes more confident and stops trying to cram Oz into a traditional "fairytale" paradigm. His final book, Glinda of Oz, is practically science fiction, with underwater domed cities, convertible submarines, and voice-activated machinery.
Anyway. Aboard the Gump our heroes fly out of the Emerald City, heading south with the idea of getting help from the mighty Glinda. Unfortunately, the passengers get careless and fall asleep while the Gump flies tirelessly onward through the night. When they wake, they are over a strange, uncanny land where the houses are all square with peaked roofs, instead of the proper domed dwellings one finds in Oz.
The Gump crashlands on a mountaintop, and its passengers tumble into a huge jackdaw nest full of junk the birds have pilfered over the years. When the jackdaws return our heroes hide from them by scattering the Scarecrow's straw over themselves. Only the invulnerable Tin Woodman and Sawhorse remain uncovered to drive off the birds.
Unfortunately, the Scarecrow's straw is scattered and lost, so he has to resort to stuffing himself with dollar bills. This does bring up the question of where the heck they've gotten to. The Gump flew south from the Emerald City, overshot the Deadly Desert, and wound up somewhere in the "terrible outside world." And yet this is a place with high mountain peaks, native jackdaws, and United States paper currency.
If we assume the Gump passed through the same mysterious aerial portal connecting Oz and the central United States that Dorothy and the Wizard both used, then the Gump has either cracked up in the Ozarks or the mountains of northern New Mexico. That would account for the peaks and the dollars, but not the jackdaws -- they are a Eurasian bird. Either the Gump's passengers encountered a colony of American crows which they mistook for jackdaws, or there is more than one passage between Oz and our own world.
Actually, there is evidence for a link between Oz and Europe. The native peoples of Oz have a distinctly Mitteleuropan sound to their tribal names: Munchkins, Quadlings, Winkies, and Gillikins could all be lesser-known Germanic peoples. Their characteristic costume of knee-breeches, tail-coats, and conical wide-brimmed hats for men, and long dresses with petticoats and aprons for women supports this. It would appear that Oz was colonized from Europe during historic times.
I have an interesting theory: the original inhabitants of Oz were from Hamelin, in Germany, led there by the Pied Piper. That also explains the large population of sentient mice in Oz. However, this theory still doesn't account for why there's a fortune in U.S. paper money sitting on a mountaintop somewhere in the Alps. Either the money isn't actual dollars or the birds aren't jackdaws. Take your pick.
The travelers repair the Gump by means of some Wishing Pills they find in the empty Powder of Life container. It's rather astounding how casual people in Oz are about how they handle magical items of staggering power. The Wishing Pills can do literally anything, but either Dr. Pipt forgot he left them in the box of Powder of Life when he sold it, or Mombi put them there and forgot about them. Most people would keep them locked in some giant vault under heavy guard.
It's actually possible that the Wishing Pills have some kind of enchantment which makes people forget they exist, because after wishing the Gump repaired, Our Heroes manage to leave the pills in the jackdaw nest. Fortunately for the rest of the world the jackdaws never figure out the trick of counting to seventeen by twos (a requirement for using the pills), so we are spared the eternal domination of omnipotent feathered tyrants.
Our Heroes return to Oz aboard the Gump, and touch down at the fortress home of Glinda the Good, where we'll pick up next time.
Comments