So was The Scarecrow Fiyero after all? Elphaba seems to think so, that he’s coming back home disguised as a scarecrow. But, at one point, she’s told that the Scarecrow has pulled his straw out to protect Dorothy from the bees.
How does Boq become the Tin Woodsman? And when does he become a victim of domestic abuse (which is mentioned on the back cover)? I didn’t see ANY of that in the book.
Doesn’t Elphaba go a little batty a little too quick? She’s okay, the Nessarose dies, and then she decides to kill Madame Morrible. I mean, I’m no author, but there just wasn’t much in the way of justification for her actions.
I borrowed the book from a friend, and it had been a while since she’d read it, and spent more time watching the show than reading the book (she works in a capacity with touring productions of Broadway musicals), so some of what she was telling me applies, and some doesn’t.
The last third or so of the book seems to happen awfully fast - but I think maybe that’s because Elphaba is going sort of nuts. I gathered myself that in the final analysis her thinking the Scarecrow was Fiyero was the big indicator that she was getting unbalanced, but you could definately read it the other way.
The musical, at least from the soundtrack (I haven’t seen the musical but I did get the soundtrack and was very disappointed) seemed to be extremely simplified and mundanified from the book.
Good book, but nothing great. I felt that Fiyero and the Scarecrow were not the same person, but Elphaba was getting loopy by then, so she thought they were. I’m not sure though. Now that you mention it, it could be the other way round.
Well, my understanding is that, in the musical (which I have NOT seen), Fiyero is, in fact, the Scarecrow. Then again, in the musical, Nessarose has arms.
In the musical, actually, Fiyero turns into the Scarecrow. After Glinda traps unintentionally traps Elphaba into the wizard’s hands, Fiyero bargains his life for her freedom. When he is taken into custody (hung on a pole in a cornfield), Elphaba casts a spell to save his life
“Let his flesh not be torn, let his blood leave no stain,
For however they beat him, let him feel no pain…”
When we next see Fiyero, his body has been replaced with a scarecrow’s, and Elphaba and Fiyero go off into the sunset together.
I loved loved loved LOVED the first half of the book, but the second half… not so much. It’s okay, but nothing amazing. But I really cared about the first half.
I’m still wondering about Boq, his “transformation” into the Tin Woodman, and his domestic abuse. The abuse, again, is mentioned on the back cover. You’d think it’d be somewhere IN the text.
Sorry to resurrect this thread, but I recently read this book and wanted to respond to one of your questions that no one else answered.
You’re confusing the play and the book here. In the book, the Tin Woodman’s name was originally Nick Chopper (according to the Cow). He was in love with a girl who lived with her grandmother. The grandmother didn’t want the girl to get married and move away, so she went to Nessarose and asked her to put a spell on Nick’s axe so it would cause him to chop up his own body, which it did. So after the loss of each body part, he went to a tinsmith and had it replaced with a tin part. This is consistent with the Woodman’s backstory as told in Baum’s original book (except I don’t think Baum identified the sorceress who enchanted the axe as the Wicked Witch of the East, which is who Nessarose became)
It was in the musical that Boq became the Tin Woodman. In the book, Boq just moved back to Munchkinland, got married, had a bunch of kids, and let Dorothy stay at his house for a night when she was on her way to the Emerald City (this is also consistent with Baum’s original story).
As for as the domestic abuse thing, I’m as confused as you are. My suspicion is that the people hired to write the synopses for the jackets of books don’t always read the whole thing very carefully, I think maybe they just skim it. Though, I guess you could sort of consider what the grandmother did to him domestic abuse. I don’t know.