If Wicked—the musical written by Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman—was not in the public’s radar before 2024, it certainly is now, with the Jon M. Chu film starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande. The smash hit, with powerful ballads such as “Defying Gravity” (and Erivo’s iconic riff), and duets such as “What Is This Feeling” and solos like “Popular”, this musical has been a staple of the musical theatre community for decades, with the movie taking a similar place in cinematic history. However, neither of these feats would be possible without the novel of the same name by Gregory Maguire (or without the 1939 Victor Fleming movie The Wizard of Oz, and the 1900 Frank Baum novel of the same name). However, with the success of Wicked the musical and now the movie, the book has often faded into the background, less significant than its counterparts.

What is most interesting about the Maguire novel, though, is how it is received by musical fans. Many have said they were surprised by how dark it was, especially compared to the glamour and silliness of the musical in comparison. As well, there are more sexual elements in the book that were left out completely in the musical (perhaps for the better in this case, given the younger audiences of it). What I find fascinating, though, is how little the politics of the novel are addressed in its subsequent adaptations, and by fans.

The novel and the musical take different turns of plot, but the general gist of both is that Elphaba, an unfortunately green girl with a talent in sorcery, finds herself studying at a magical school called Shiz, with her annoyingly upbeat and very blonde roommate Glinda being first her adversary, and then her friend. Elphaba, however, becomes radicalized when she sees Capital-A Animals (i.e., Animals with sentience, as compared to lowercase-a animals, who are not sentient) have their rights significantly and continuously stripped throughout the first section of the plot. Dr Dillamond, a goat professor that Elphaba bonds with, is eventually removed from the school as a teacher. Elphaba goes to the Wizard of Oz to plead with him to help change the course of how Animals are treated, and is instead met with the reality that the Wizard was the one orchestrating it. Angry, Elphaba goes rogue. And this is where the musical and novel part ways, with the two pieces of media splitting radically in terms of where Elphaba goes next and what happens.

While the musical addresses the politics of the novel at times, such as the inclusion of the scene of someone vandalizing a chalkboard in Dr Dillamond’s classroom with “Animals should be seen and not heard”, much of what causes Elphaba to go rogue in the first place is omitted from the musical entirely. The commentary that Maguire was making in the novel is addressed shallowly at best, focusing more on the treatment of Elphaba in the musical as a woman with green skin rather than the treatment of Animals in the world of Oz, which served as a focal point in the novel. While how Elphaba is treated is extremely important, especially as the novel gives more context of her childhood and more dynamics in the world overall with the different provinces and species, the musical seems to lack the same critical analysis of society and oppression overall (and I’m saying this as a very passionate musical theatre fan who loves Wicked).

One such way the novel brings more politics into its plot is what actually happens to Dr Dillamond. In the musical, the professor is removed from a classroom, with announcements that Animals are no longer allowed to teach. He is dragged out yelling, while Elphaba only watches in horror. In the novel, however, his story is much more gruesome. Throughout one summer in between school years in Maguire’s novel, Elphaba stays on campus at Shiz and studies with Dr. Dillamond. His studies focus on what is biologically or neurologically different between humans (and other humanoid species) and Animals, and his studies suggested that when examining the brain, nothing was different. He intended to prove that the legislation against Animals was unjust, and would require that humanoid species with sentience would also need to be treated in exactly the same way, given that nothing actually separated them.

Elphaba had gone into the depths of theological and philosophical reasoning as to how Animals and animals ended up divided as they were, with the novel expanding on many different religious schools of thought that the musical doesn’t even mention, explaining the origin of this difference. All of this to say, while in its early phases, Dr. Dillamond’s research could have changed everything for Animals and governmental legislation had it come to light. Of course, Dr. Dillamond was found with his throat slashed so violently that it nearly decapitated him in his study, with the claim from Madame Morrible (whom Elphaba distrusted from the beginning in the novel) that he had fallen on a broken magnifying glass. It was believed by Elphaba and Glinda’s chaperone at Shiz, Ama Clutch, that Madame Morrible’s mechanical servant, Grommetik, had been the one to kill him.

Dr. Dillamond’s death is what pushed Elphaba into even more radical territory, because she knew that she could no longer trust any authority figure at Shiz or in the government overall. This more closely matches severe and intense political situations in history, mirroring situations such as the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. over his civil rights politics, or other such examples of activists attempting to fight for their cause. In the musical, Elphaba is further pushed to not work with the Wizard in Act Two after discovering Dr Dillamond, who had lost the ability to speak thanks to the Wizard, despite still being alive. While this is effective as a plot point in the musical, it loses the gut punch that was Dillamond’s death in the book, as it seems to lower the stakes that he was operating within. In this sense, the politics were toned down in the musical to accommodate more family-friendly tendencies, while additionally watering down the impact of his character on Elphaba. The musical, in turn, focuses more on the relationships between the characters, especially on the love triangle between Elphaba, Fiyero, and Glinda.

Another large difference between the musical and the book is what Elphaba does after her confrontation with the Wizard of Oz following Dr. Dillamond’s death/removal. In the musical, she becomes a pariah, a symbol of wickedness that eventually causes her father’s death and sister’s subsequent rise to power in one region of Oz. Either way, Elphaba could not show her face without the fear of being arrested. Meanwhile, in the book, Elphaba leaves very quietly after her confrontation, slipping away after kissing Glinda goodbye and disappearing from the world for a while. It is only later in the novel when we discover what she ended up doing, when Fiyero happens upon her in the Emerald City years later. In the novel, Elphaba had gone virtually undercover to work with an underground “terrorist” (or revolutionary) organization, and worked to stay under the radar; meanwhile, she and Fiyero started an affair.

There are two specific scenes I’d like to call attention to, regarding Elphaba’s life after she went off the radar. The first of which is a conversation between Elphaba and Fiyero regarding her terrorist activities, in which she justified the murder of innocents for the greater good—especially more privileged innocents living in the Emerald City, as they are complicit in the oppression of others throughout Oz. Fiyero had accused Elphaba of “eschewing all personal responsibility” and noted that if she “suppress[ed] the idea of personhood, then you suppress the notion of individual culpability” (Maguire 2024, 225). What he meant here was that if Elphaba justified violence against privileged innocents by acting as if they had no personhood (similar to how the government suppressed personhood of Animals), she was refusing accountability because she didn’t see them as having personhood over victims of oppression. Elphaba replied with: “What is worse, Fiyero? Suppressing the idea of personhood or suppressing, through torture and incarceration and starvation, real living persons?” (Ibid.)

This is a fascinating reply, as Elphaba uses the justification that what she was doing was not nearly as bad as what the government had been doing. She later used the example of choosing to save one precious piece of art in a museum if an entire city was burning, and Fiyero retorted that the privileged people in the Emerald City were not inanimate objects. Elphaba replied: “A society dame has chosen to parade herself as a living portrait. She must be treated as such. It’s her due. The denial of it, that’s your evil…I say you save the innocent bystander if you can, even if she’s a society dame, or he’s a captain of industry thriving mightily on all these repressive moves—but not, not, not at the expense of other, realer people. And if you can’t save them, you can’t. Everything costs.” (Ibid.) Fiyero replied that he did not believe in “real” and “realer” people, believing that everyone deserved to be saved based on their personhood alone.

This conversation is essential to developing nuance between two different political stances. On the one hand, resisting oppression and righting wrongs is necessary for change, and that includes, at times, violent acts. If we look at revolutions throughout history, they typically involved violence in some way, even if it was for a good cause. On another hand, if one uses the same excuses as their oppressor to justify this violence, are they any better? This is an age-old conversation, and one that I think illustrates how complex Elphaba’s motives truly were, and how terrifyingly real this whole situation is compared to historical events.

To go hand-in-hand with this scene, the second scene I’d like to highlight was a failed assassination. Elphaba had implied many times that she was going to do something radical, and insisted that Fiyero leave so he was out of the crossfire. What this radical thing ended up being was an assassination attempt on Madame Morrible. Elphaba looked primed for the act, and Madame Morrible looked none the wiser, until a gaggle of schoolgirls poured out of the school and surrounded the professor. It had been a holiday, so the possibility of children being present had not been considered; they were the “accidental context—noisy, innocent daughters of tycoons, despots, and butcher generals” (Ibid 246).

It was a cruel irony to place Elphaba in one of her hypotheticals from the previous conversations, where she would now have to make the choice: completing her task for the freedom of the oppressed (with the risk of harming children), or standing down. And she stood down. Fiyero saw that she looked conflicted, wanting to do her task and keep herself from it all at once, “shivering with self-loathing so violently…” (Ibid) when Madame Morrible walked into safety.

This scene was incredibly important for the development of Elphaba’s radicalism, as it showed that her commitment to the cause could waver when faced with the actual consequences of her actions. Furthermore, it does show how much she cared about what she was doing, to the point where she was willing to risk her life and livelihood for it. Compared to the musical, in which this assassination attempt never happened, we do not see Elphaba’s complex feelings on these issues as much, thus simplifying her character and her beliefs.

Another important scene that was left out of the musical was Fiyero’s realization of what had been happening to the Animals in Oz. Up until this point, Fiyero disagreed with the violence being used to achieve resistance. However, he spends some time at a cafe, in which the owner had noted that his winter garden was no longer in use due to an explosion that had occurred the night before, and said: “Finding good Munchkinlander help to repair the damage is getting harder, too. The Munchkinlander TikTok touch, there’s nothing like it. But a lot of our friends in the service sector have gone back to their eastern farms. Scared of violence against them—well, so many of them are so small, don’t you think they seem to provoke it?—they’re all cowards” (Ibid. 226-227).

Beyond the hatefulness in this comment, it also reflects a similar attitude we see at times in today’s world, wherein people will say hateful, judgmental things about people that they also rely on for jobs, such as restaurant workers, fast-food workers, and customer service representatives. Fiyero then notices an open area over the wall—something he wouldn’t have seen if he had been in the winter garden—that had a schoolyard (among other things) and a barbed wire fence. Out of some doors appeared some Quadlings and Gillikense (both oppressed groups in Oz), and a family of Bears. The Bear cub started to play with a ball in the yard, the Quadlings danced, and the Gillikenese just smoked and stared out past the fence. When a Gale Force officer (Oz’s secret police) came out and seemed to demand that the group come back inside, Fiyero thought, “Work as a team—there are twelve of you and only one of him” (Ibid. 229). The Bear cub began to cry and refused to go back inside, and the officer came down with a club on the skull of the cub, killing him instantly. Fiyero was so shocked that he dropped a cup, and the owner drew the curtains and said that they had no concern for private businesses nearby regarding the noise. Fiyero suggested that the explosion was someone helping the prisoners to escape, and the owner told him to be quiet, and that he was a “private citizen who minded his business” (Ibid. 230).

This moment struck a chord with Fiyero, and he wondered if it was an accident that he saw that act of violence at all, or if “...the world unwraps itself to you, again and again, as soon as you are ready to see it anew?” (Ibid.) Fiyero then held back from telling Elphaba, worried that she would drift away if he tried to “convert to her cause”, showing that he finally understood her anger and rebellion in Oz as oppression for several groups only ramped up. The conversation mentioned earlier did happen after this event; however, it was significant in the sense that he understood her cause on a deeper level than before. As well, it further serves as more worldbuilding, something the musical also lacks.

While the musical has some of the political elements, it comes across more like a Disney movie, where the good guys always win, and the bad guys lose, everyone recognizing their wrongdoings. The Wizard of Oz had fled, Elphaba and Fiyero got to be together, and Elphaba had even faked her death so she could live freely at last. The book, on the other hand, ends in a more nuanced way, wherein good guys do die (such as Dr Dillamond, or Fiyero, who was murdered by Gale Force guards assumedly because they believed he was involved in her activities), bad guys sometimes win, and nothing is cut and dry. Even though the Wizard of Oz does end up fleeing, the book ends with chaos reigning and no simple answer provided. As well, Elphaba did end up being melted by water because of Dorothy, after she had accidentally set her skirt on fire, and the girl tried to save her.

The book and musical share many themes, such as the nature of good and evil, who decides who is worthy of rights and who is not, and standing up for what one believes in. As well, the friendship Elphaba and Glinda share is precious in both the musical and the novel (however, some argue that it was more than a friendship in the novel, with Elphaba kissing Glinda goodbye after they had confronted the Wizard of Oz). However, the musical lacks the nuance and intensity of politics that the book had, which subsequently makes the political messaging seem much more watered down and secondary to the romance and friendship of it all. I would argue that Maguire’s novel takes a more philosophical approach to the themes, examining them in a more subtle way while also weaving political theory and theology into his narrative to create the world of Oz.

Meanwhile, the musical directly addresses the issue of Animals’ mistreatment and spends more time fleshing out the relationships between the characters. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it reads like “Political Morality 101”, stating issues directly rather than letting the audience learn for themselves; it simplifies the issues Elphaba concerns herself with to make it digestible, but that is to the detriment of the overall political messaging, since it makes these things seem black-and-white, rather than the complex web of oppression and privilege that is set up in the novel. In this way, it reminds me of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie—a great movie to be sure, but it sets up its messaging like a Beginner’s Guide to Feminism, rather than working to address more complex issues like intersectionality, privilege, and the roots of misogyny. While important in its own way, Barbie does not add much to the discussion of feminism, much like the Wicked musical adds nothing to the discussion of systemic oppression that has not already been realized or addressed.

In essence, I find the musical provokes discussion about the relationships found in it, and the “otherness” Elphaba faces; the creators even admitted that they were more focused on the relationship between Elphaba and Glinda; the novel, on the other hand, provokes discussion about politics, oppression and privilege, political assassinations, and how policing is used to further oppress the population. I find it also addresses the idea of how privilege is in itself an indoctrination of a sort, as it prevented Glinda and Fiyero from recognizing what was happening to Animals and other groups until they were faced head-on with it. This is not me saying that the musical is not important—on the contrary, I find it adds so much value to the theatre world as a whole—but I am saying that the way it went about simplifying the political messaging of the source material dampened the impact of it as a whole, and it was to the detriment of the story that so many aspects were excluded.