Wizard Of Oz Color Analysis

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For L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, color takes a center part in the novel. The story centers on young Dorothy, a farm girl in Kansas who is tired of her dreary life. Her home is dreary and gray. After her house get caught in a cyclone she wakes up in Oz, a land filled with beauty. She meets companions on her journey home and fights the evil witch of the west. Throughout the novel the reader is exposed to different colors. These colors are gray, blue, and green, and they symbolize different feelings and experiences Dorothy encounters in the book.

The first color the book displays is gray. This color is used to describe Dorothy's home. Her farm in Kansas is gray and dreary all around. This coincides with Dorothy's feeling of her home. She is tired and bored of it. She wants to experience something different. Gray is a very boring color and that is used to describe the situation Dorothy is in when the novel starts.

The next color
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This is when she and her party finally reach Emerald City. The city is described as being completely green, as apposed to the blue land of the munchkins. Like the Munchkins, the people of Emerald City adopt the personality of green into their own selves. Green often evokes the feelings of money and selfishness. The people of Emerald City are rich. They are not as hospitable as the Munchkins. This shows that the green color does have an effect on the city.

The novel does a great way of using color to be more than just a way to describe the setting. In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the characters take on the personality of the colors they wear. Dorothy's sad state in the beginning is shown through her grey, dreary, and sad home. The blue of the Munchkins show their friendliness and willingness to help Dorothy. The green of Emerald City shows the wealth and personality of its inhabitants. In the end, the novel is an amazing example in how to use color to an authors

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