Theatrical Adaptation

9-29-06 #4

After reading through the Grimmerie and the script from the musical version of Wicked, I have become more and more intrigued by the history of the Wicked Witch of the West. What’s her history? Where did she come from? Is she really completely wicked? I think it is a case of prejudice against Elphaba solely based on her skin color. People look at her, and see where she came from and without even listening to her side of the story or trying to understand her, they assume she is a horror and a wicked person.

When looking at both versions of Wicked, the novel and the musical, Elphaba was just pushed into the life she had. From the beginning, her parents shun her, her mother just let’s her be and her father is often gone, Nanny is the only one to take care of her and show kindness to her. They create the image in the child’s mind that she is a social outcast, she is different and no one wants her around. When she goes off to The Shiz, she is used to being a social outcast and becomes a loner, not even trying to make any friends, and people take to that. She is shunned even more for her differences. Elphaba is living out the only life she knows, she doesn’t know how to act socially or how it feels to be accepted, so she doesn’t pursue that life.

After she goes to meet the wizard, she isolates her self for five years because that’s what she feels she is supposed to do with her life, become a terrorist. Elphaba’s does what people assume she is going to do, become wicked, mostly because she has isolated herself and appears to be different than everyone. I don’t think that she is truly wicked, I just think she is fulfilling others images of her. If Elphaba took control of her own life and fulfilled her own dreams as compared to someone else, she would have been able to do something to better society, rather than becoming a terrorist. The person that is portrayed in Wicked is not Elphaba’s true person; it is a mask that she covers up with so that people won’t get too close to her, much like the mask she wears when she goes into public while she is isolating herself. I think she is a good person, just completely misunderstood for a fear of someone getting close to her and hurting her. Elphaba just doesn’t know what it is like to be loved, she has been shoved into the painful life she has and does not know how to live any other way.

posted by Ann @ 11:23 AM