The Witch of the East wasn’t terrorizing the munchkins, she was casting a complex summoning spell. All the fireworks must have frightened the midgets with their childlike minds. After all, you see no dead or injured little guys lying about.
However, the ruby slippers gave the spell a little more oomph than the witch intended and, well, now we know what happens when summoning spells go bad.
Maybe she’s just a dingbat. I mean, she doesn’t even understand that Dorothy could just be an ordinary girl, she thinks all women are either good witches or bad witches. I think she’s been sipping on too much brew and done gone batty.
Way back in college I had a fun Parliamentary Debate case based on Dorothy rejecting the wizard’s call to go get the broom. A lot of fun to argue during the main rounds about just how wrong it was—the shoes rightfully belonged to the witches sister, the witch did not directly harm you (though veiled threats were made), etc. The summation/wrap up brought it back to reality in terms of blindly accepting government authority to kill enemies of the state or, depending on how opp reacted, on the immorality of being a mercenary.
When Margaret Thatcher died, there was an online campaign by opponents in the U.K. to celebrate her death by propelling “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” up the music charts. The song reached the number two slot and, in an attempt at a compromise between issues of freedom of speech and respect for someone who had just died, the BBC decided not to play it in full during its Official Chart Show that week.