Need help on introduction to fiction week 5 part 2

Some students occasionally have trouble transitioning to reading and writing about novels. We spend the first 3 or 4 weeks learning about short stories. How to read the plot, identify the characters and themes, and how the setting might impact the story. Nothing changes when you transition into novels. The only real difference is length. Some teachers and scholars try to identify some grand characteristics of the novel as a genre- often claiming it was developed in the late 1800s, that it spun out of Romanticism, that it must have this-or-that style. None of this is true. We have evidence of novels going back to Rome and Ancient Greece, to say nothing of early China and the Indus Valley. There are novels from Medieval Europe and Colonial America. People have been writing long-form, non-poetic stories for a very, VERY long time. Don't get bogged down thinking that novels are some mysterious species of literature that requires a totally different understanding of literature. They're long short stories. They're more complicated because there's more room for them to be.

   A few things to consider as you read  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz:

1. The main plot of the book is Dorothy's attempts to get back home. Along the way, though, other events happen. She meets the Munchkins, travels through different parts of Oz, defeats the Wicked Witch of the West, etc. These are  sub-plots. Short stories are often just one scene, one event in the character(s)'s life. In longer stories, you usually have a number of scenes/events that could actually be short stories on their own, but all serve to advance the main plot. Dorothy visiting the Munchkins could be a short story- it has a beginning, middle, and end; but it fits within the larger story of her trying to get home.

2. Novels usually have a lot more characters. In short stories, you usually only meet a couple of characters- the protagonist(s), the antagonist, and little else. There's no room for anything else. Remember, though, in  Metamorphosis, that there was the entire family and other characters that popped in and out. In  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, you have (famously) the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and the Cowardly Lion. These are not the protagonists. They are  secondary (supporting) characters; they have focus in a single chapter, or a part of a sub-plot, but their function in the story is to advance the protagonist's (Dorothy's) plot line and character arc.

3. We learned in short stories that a story can use its characters, plot, and settings to introduce a theme, the moral or point of the story. "The Tale-Tell Heart" explored insanity and a guilty conscience. "Yellow Wallpaper" explored the mistreatment of women. In each case, a short story usually can only explore one or two themes, again- there's just no time for more. In a novel, multiple themes are explored, and developed over time.

To understand the themes of a novel, it's best to understand the context of that novel.  To be clear, you are still not supposed to talk about the author. Don't try to state what Baum was intending or saying-  YOU DON'T KNOW. But, the historical context of when/where/how a novel was written can be useful in decoding its themes- this is called Historicism (or New Historicism, depending on who you're talking to). So, a few key facts to know about the context of  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz:

· The book was published in 1900. Consider that places this story over a 100 years in the past. America was VERY different. We had just finished conquering (sorry, winning) the West and had started expanding into Latin America and Asia. The Industrial Revolution was well under way, with amazing things like the electric light, the automobile, and the telephone becoming increasingly available to the public. Dangerous progressives were coming to power, demanding such radical reforms as voting rights for women, the prohibition of alcohol, social/economic support programs for the elderly and poor, and limitations on child labor. Look  here (Links to an external site.) for more historical information on 1900 America.

· There have been A LOT of interpretations of the imagery in  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Many people look on it as  an attack on the Gilded Age and American Expansionism (Links to an external site.). Admittedly, there are a great many interpretations, from it being a populist allegory (the common people rising up against an elitist ruling class), to an inditement of the gold standard (dollars used to be based entirely on the value of gold), to even some... more unusual occult interpretations.

· The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is arguably the most famous of the Oz books (thanks largely to the 1939 movie), but it's only one of  13 books that Baum wrote (Links to an external site.). While not a series as we think of them today (with interconnected plots, characters, etc.), the novels all share the setting of Oz and some characters.