SOURCE: Hudlin, Edward. “The Mythology of Oz: An Interpretation.” Papers on Language and Literature 25, no. 4 (fall 1989): 443-62.

In the following essay, Hudlin analyzes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in terms of the structure of Joseph Campbell's heroic myth.

L. Frank Baum's masterpiece, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, has been the subject of psychoanalytical, sociological, political, and even economic analyses. Few critics, however, have attempted to examine it from a truly mythological or philosophical perspective. Lacking such a perspective, some critics have found Baum's writings too episodic, while others have been more concerned with what Oz [The Wonderful Wizard of Oz] reveals about Baum himself, than with the aesthetic dimensions of the story qua story.¹ While these psycho-social aspects are important, they do not demonstrate how the incidents of the story contribute to its unity, binding it together and driving the plot forward. They do not explain why the...