Our heroes have a couple of random encounters on their way out of Munchkin country -- a weird spacetime distortion, a giant porcupine, and an illusionary wall -- but with the help of the Shaggy Man they get past all of them. As in Road to Oz, these sequences strongly suggest that Baum was thinking of staging this book as a play. Most of the things that have happened so far in the story are well within the resources of a small-town vaudeville theater. The Woozy could be knocked together by any competent cabinetmaker, the Patchwork Girl would be nothing more than a cool costume and some makeup, and even the giant carnivorous plants could be done with ropes and cloth.
The only element in The Patchwork Girl of Oz which would not be easy to stage -- or to film, either -- would be Bungle, the Glass Cat. Until the development of modern computer-generated animation, it would be almost impossible to make a moving, talking, transparent cat. I expect Mr. Baum planned to switch in a different character for the stage version, just as he replaced the little dog Toto with Dorothy's pet cow for the play The Wizard of Oz.
Once in the territory around the Emerald City, Ojo starts looking for a six-leafed clover, as per instructions, but the Shaggy Man informs him that the law expressly forbids it. Damned EPA. They also run into the Scarecrow and the famous Sawhorse. The Scarecrow and Scraps immediately begin a comic romance, but the Sawhorse and the Woozy start bickering. The Scarecrow is bound on an errand of his own -- getting his painted ear renewed by, of all people, ex-General Jinjur -- so he doesn't join the group, which is good because they'd need their own area code at this rate.
Just before they reach the Emerald City, Ojo spots a six-leafed clover and picks it at once, despite Ozma's pointless feel-good regulations. However, the regime has eyes everywhere, and as soon as the party reaches the gates of the Emerald City, the Soldier With Green Whiskers summarily arrests Ojo for his crime. He drapes the unlucky Munchkin lad in a hooded white robe with eye-holes (not unlike the garb of Spanish capirotes) and hauls him off to jail.
One generation's absurd humor is another generation's nightmare. When Baum was writing The Patchwork Girl of Oz, the notion of being arrested and jailed for picking a plant was comic nonsense. Modern readers remembering the ocean of blood resulting from 20th Century Utopian schemes may find the whole sequence considerably less funny.
Meanwhile the Shaggy Man and the other guests call upon Dorothy in her rooms at Ozma's palace. They explain the situation, and we have an unexpected development: with Ojo in jail, neither Scraps nor the Glass Cat has much interest in continuing the quest. The cat's heart is a cold ruby, and Scraps has nothing but stuffing in her chest. As the Patchwork Girl herself put it, "A heart must be a great annoyance to one. It makes a person feel sad or sorry or devoted or sympathetic—all of which sensations interfere with one's happiness."
One might call this cod-Objectivism, except that little Alisa Rosenbaum was still in grade school in St. Petersburg at the time this was written.
It's the Woozy who shows real heroism. "I have never seen those unfortunate people you are speaking of, and yet I am sorry for them, having at times been unfortunate myself. When I was shut up in that forest I longed for some one to help me, and by and by Ojo came and did help me. So I'm willing to help his uncle. I'm only a stupid beast, Dorothy, but I can't help that, and if you'll tell me what to do to help Ojo and his uncle, I'll gladly do it."
Dorothy takes an immediate liking to the beast, as did I upon re-reading this passage.
Ojo's hard time is cut short when Ozma pardons him, though not before hauling him before her royal court and letting him denounce himself for his crimes. (Reading this whole section of the book really does give me the totalitarian creeps. It's all perfectly innocent and well-meaning, but you can see the germ of Stalin and Pol Pot in the heart of Baum's earnest turn-of-the-century Progressivism. It's just too easy to shift from "wouldn't it be nice if everyone did this . . . " to "we must make everyone do this . . . " to finally "we must execute everyone who doesn't do this . . . ")
Anyway. With Ojo rehabilitated and no longer compelled to dress like Robert Byrd, he can resume his quest for the magic ingredients. He still needs a gill of water from a dark well, the left wing of a yellow butterfly, and a drop of oil from the body of a living man.
But now Ojo's got some heavyweights on his team. Dorothy and the Scarecrow are joining the party, although the Glass Cat prefers to remain at Ozma's palace. They stop for a visit with Jack Pumpkinhead, so that the three animated constructs of Oz -- the Scarecrow, Jack, and the Patchwork Girl -- can hold a little private summit and trade wordplay. I have to give L. Frank Baum credit here. He manages to make the three of them distinct characters, despite all having the same basic concept. Jack is naive, the Scarecrow is witty, and Scraps is whimsical. A fool, a joker, and a clown.
Their next encounter is with the Tottenhots, strange little "dusky" people with scarlet hair that stands straight up like wires, who live in pot-shaped houses. They are mischievous almost to the point of sociopathy, and are nocturnal. After tossing the Scarecrow and Scraps around -- which neither one minds very much, as it gives their stuffing a good shaking out -- they eventually agree to let the travelers stay in their houses during the night while they bounce around like six-year-olds dosed with Jolt Cola and amphetamines.
Again, one is struck by how Baum is writing for the stage. Some kid actors or midgets, a little greasepaint, and voila! Tottenhots. The scene just cries out for a musical number and Baum even helpfully provides some lyrics.
"Tottenhots" is of course an anagram of "Hottentots" -- a real-world tribe inhabiting South Africa and Namibia, known to themselves as the Khoikhoi. At the time Baum was writing, they were much in the news, because of the extremely brutal war the Germans were waging against them. Germany had claimed Southwest Africa during the "scramble for Africa" at the Berlin Conference, only to discover that the territory was mostly desert, without much in the way of rubber groves, diamond mines, or even farmland. German settlers preferred Texas and Argentina. The Kaiser's colonial office apparently decided that a massacre-based economy was the best way to develop Southwest Africa, and engaged in bloody campaigns during the early years of the 20th Century.
It's kind of . . . odd . . . that Baum was able to turn a tribe best known for being on the receiving end of some pretty awful treatment into jolly mischievous little imps. (At this point one can put on some hip waders and start deconstructing the racial whatsit of Baum's whatever, but to heck with that. He probably just thought the name sounded funny.)
Next time: YOOP!
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.