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How Is Elphaba's Use Of The Color Green As Evil

721 Words3 Pages

The book opens on the Yellow Brick Road. Dorothy and her friends are being watched by the Wicked Witch, and she thinks back on her life in Oz, how she wasn’t always so wicked as others think she is. “But surely the curse was on the land of Oz, not on her. Though Oz had given her a twisted life, hadn’t it also made her capable?”(page 4). It’s not Elphaba’s fault that she’s wicked, Oz had shaped her this way. From her childhood to her death,the sweet girl is morphed into a feared, powerful witch. Elphaba and the Witch are two completely different people. Throughout Wicked, Elphaba develops through the theme-- not to judge a book by its cover-- through the representation of the color green as evil, her views on religion, and the two people who …show more content…

The Wizard is presented to Dorothy as a large green head, The Emerald City was built and occupied by the tyrannus government, and Elphaba is born with green skin. However, elphaba is not wicked. In her young adulthood, elphaba realizes this and decides she wants to live up to this stereotype, simply because it’s hopeless to be seen any other way. In Oz, or really anywhere, people fear the unknown. Elphaba is the unknown.Green skin on a young woman is seen as odd or unusual, yet elphaba believes people are getting what's coming to them when she does her wicked deeds. She states on page 148 that “Father loves lost causes.” Elphaba is depicted as a social lost cause, a hopeless case. However, her father was not proud of her… he was ashamed and didn't love her as his own daughter, but as a …show more content…

It can be argued that Nanny is similar to Feste in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, she always knows what's happening without ever being involved, and she is much wider than the other members of Elphaba’s family. Another example is Fiyero. He helped Elphaba realize that she had the capability to love and be loved in return. He showed her that she deserved human contact, human union, and he loved her for who she was, not what she looked like. He helped her realize the theme to “not judge a book by its cover” and that shye didn't have to live up to that

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