albadger: (I think you're evil! EVIL!)
[personal profile] albadger
Longtime fans of this blog (why do I make that plural?) will remember when I re-read L. Frank Baum's the Land of Oz and was appalled by its disturbing, creepy ending. Put the scotch in my plans to re-read the whole Oz series, it did. Well, time goes by, I love my Nook, and I especially love not paying to read books... so back to the Oz series I go. And I've gotten farther in, through Ozma of Oz, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, and now the Road to Oz... and I'm speechless. I can do nothing but present you the passage in question.
"Will your folks worry?" asked the shaggy man, his eyes twinkling in a pleasant way.

"I s'pose so," answered Dorothy with a sigh. "Uncle Henry says there's ALWAYS something happening to me; but I've always come home safe at the last. So perhaps he'll take comfort and think I'll come home safe this time."

"I'm sure you will," said the shaggy man, smilingly nodding at her. "Good little girls never come to any harm, you know. For my part, I'm good, too; so nothing ever hurts me."

Dorothy looked at him curiously. His clothes were shaggy, his boots were shaggy and full of holes, and his hair and whiskers were shaggy. But his smile was sweet and his eyes were kind.

"Why didn't you want to go to Butterfield?" she asked.

"Because a man lives there who owes me fifteen cents, and if I went to Butterfield and he saw me he'd want to pay me the money. I don't want money, my dear."

"Why not?" she inquired.

"Money," declared the shaggy man, "makes people proud and haughty. I don't want to be proud and haughty. All I want is to have people love me; and as long as I own the Love Magnet, everyone I meet is sure to love me dearly."

"The Love Magnet! Why, what's that?"

"I'll show you, if you won't tell any one," he answered, in a low, mysterious voice.
Yes. That's right. The filthy vagrant has a Love Magnet, and he will show it to the little girl if she won't tell any one. Seriously, I'm speechless. And this is children's literature. Classic children's literature. This is going to disrupt my NaNoWriMo plans, I can at least say that.

Date: 2012-10-18 04:58 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] maxauburn.livejournal.com
That's just wierd, Al.

Date: 2012-10-19 10:50 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] albadger.livejournal.com
Yep, it is... I wonder sometimes if it's just us in our cynical age projecting negativity on the innocent sweetness of a more naive time, but then you go pull up the newspaper headlines from 1907, and... innocent and sweet and naive, my foot! But back then kids didn't see all that, and today they do...

Date: 2012-10-18 05:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] snousle.livejournal.com
And that's when it's pointing south. Would you like to see it point north?

Continuity Error!

Date: 2012-10-19 10:46 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] albadger.livejournal.com
In the Road to Oz, the Love Magnet works just because the Shaggy Man has it on his person. In later books, it only works if he takes it out and shows it off. Progress?

Date: 2012-10-18 05:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] dhpbear.livejournal.com
So did he put the hardest part of his body into the place where she goes to the bathroom?

Date: 2012-10-19 10:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] albadger.livejournal.com
That's right, David -- he got his foot stuck in her toilet.

And Happy Birthday!

Date: 2012-10-18 05:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] qbear.livejournal.com
I was always kind of weirded out by the whole Ozma/trannie thing too. In some of the later books she mentions having been a boy, but she certainly became a super-femme girl, with the ribbons and the giant poppies on her head. Unlike Scraps, the Patchwork Girl, who always struck me as kind of dykey.

Date: 2012-10-19 10:48 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] albadger.livejournal.com
If movies have taught us anything, they have taught us that children who are forcibly raised as the wrong gender will inevitably grow up to be homicidal maniacs, so I wonder if there's a string of unsolved murders that CSI:Emerald City just can't seem to get a handle on...

Date: 2012-10-19 05:50 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] benpanced.livejournal.com
"That's okay. Just point on the doll where he put the compass."
Edited Date: 2012-10-19 05:51 pm (UTC)

Date: 2012-10-22 02:32 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] albadger.livejournal.com
Let's also remember the other Nightmare from the Road to Oz, the Scoodlers, who have faces on the backs of their heads, and overwhelm their enemies by removing their heads and hurling them as weapons. Unlike most things in Oz, this actually hurts.

But then, we're not actually in Oz at that point, so anything can happen. Anything.

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