How different can people be?

*SPOILERS*

     Sadly, I've never seen the play Wicked. But I have read the book three times. This was my first time reading it for school, though. Wicked by Gregory Maguire is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz, but it's no kids' book. It's disturbing at times, and it's full of social issues  One of these is how different people are allowed to be. In Wicked, people are most definitely looked down on for being different.

     One shining example of how people aren't allowed to be different in Oz is the terrible treatment of Animals. Animals are self-aware animals that can speak and think as well as humans can. When the book begins, the Wizard has just begun to pass laws limiting Animal rights. A Goat who is studying what makes Animals any different from humans is murdered just as he is about to make a breakthrough. As time passes, Animals become more and more oppressed. About five years after the Goat's death, a man named Fiyero witnesses a family of Bears being punished by a member of the Wizard's guards: "Below, because the Bears had not stood to join the lineup,the soldier raised his cudgel and it came down on the skull of the cub." Do you see what I mean by disturbing? Animals are punished for simply existing. By the end of the book, a Cow who is freed expects to be "served up rare on your finest Dixxi house porcelain dinner plates before the year is out." They have lost hope.

     Another example of being punished for being different is Elphaba Thropp, the main character. Elphie is the Wicked Witch of the West. She is born green, with a full set of razor-sharp teeth and a deep hatred of water. The first people to discriminate against her are her parents. Elphie's father, a preacher named Frex, thinks that Elphie was sent by the Unnamed God to punish him for his sins. As for Melena, Elphaba's mother? Well, "For days Melena couldn't bear to look at the thing. She held it, as a mother must. She waited for the groundwater of maternal affection to rise and overwhelm her." She never really feels affectionate towards Elphaba. Both of Elphie's parents prefer her half-sister Nessarose over her. As a young woman, people (even her roommate Galinda) exclude and laugh at her because if her skin color. Elphie becomes very passionate about Animal rights, even as the rest of Oz ceases to care. I think that part of the reason Elphie is so passionate about Animal rights is because of the alienation and unfair treatment shown to her simply because of her skin color.

     In Wicked, the characters are diverse and many, but they're not supposed to be. Every character in the book except for Galinda is punished at some point for how they look or what they are. Ideally, everyone would be like Galinda - a well-off Gillikinese girl who's smart but not quite smart enough to notice what's going on around her.