SOURCE: Griswold, Jerry. “There's No Place but Home: The Wizard of Oz.” Antioch Review 45, no. 4 (fall 1987): 462-75.

In the following essay, Griswold discusses parallels between Oz and the social state of America at the time Baum wrote his Oz books.

“Is it real or is it a dream?” This question has been raised over and over again about the land of Oz. In the 1939 MGM movie The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy is hit on the head during the cyclone and dreams up the magical land. Nothing like this happens in L. Frank Baum's book. Judy Garland may wish to go “Somewhere over the Rainbow,” but in the book the cyclone takes Dorothy there against her wishes and while she is wide awake. In the book Oz is a real place, not a land created by Dorothy's fertile imagination.

The land of Oz is certainly one of the most...