Dorothy Must Die

“Well, I had wanted to be gone. I’d wanted it for as long as I’d known there was anywhere to go. I wanted other places, other people. Another me. I wanted to leave everything and everyone behind.

But not like this.”

Here, Amy hunkers in her airborne trailer as she watches objects fly past the window and wonders if her mom is all right. She expresses regret, though she doesn’t realize it. Whether she likes her life in Kansas or not, it’s the only life she knows, and leaving behind everything we know, even for something better, is scary. The final sentence supports the old adage of “be careful what you wish for.” Amy wished to get out of Kansas, but her wishes never included a tornado, her home flying through the air, or the arrival in Oz that comes in Chapter 3. Amy dislikes Kansas and her life there, but at this moment in the story, she’s wishing she could have it all back.

“Dorothy had been here, I reminded myself. She had walked this very same path. You’re like her in so many ways, the boy had said.

Kansas, tornado, blah, blah, blah. I mean, the similarities were pretty obvious, right? But there were plenty of differences between us, too. First off, from what I remembered it hadn’t taken her long at all to make friends. It was like everyone she’d run into—witches not included—had wanted to jump on the Dorothy Express.

As for me, I’d come across two people so far, and exactly both of them had wanted nothing to do with me. It was kind of depressing to think that I could travel all the way to Oz and still be just as unpopular as I was back in Flat Hill, Kansas.”

While she walks down the Yellow Brick Road, Amy sees how her story is similar to Dorothy’s—from the tornado to landing in Munchkin Country. She also acknowledges the differences, foreshadowing Dorothy becoming Amy’s enemy later in the story. The way Amy thinks of Pete and Indigo here (the two people who’ve wanted nothing to do with her) shows that Amy still thinks poorly of herself. Pete didn’t do anything that suggested he wanted nothing to do with Amy. Amy jumps to that conclusion simply because he left when his leaving has nothing to do with her. Indigo does push Amy away, much like Amy has pushed away people at home. Amy doesn’t see the similarities between herself and Indigo because she’s still too wrapped up in her self-doubt to notice them. Amy believes she was unpopular back home, but really, she kept people at arm’s length and never gave herself the chance to have friends.

“I thought about what she’d said about Dorothy. The explanation that she’d given me was barely any explanation at all: it was one thing to believe that Oz had been corrupted by someone truly evil, but Dorothy had been good once. She had fought the Wicked Witch of the West and freed Oz. How had things gone so wrong for her?

Suddenly my mother’s face flashed into my head, and I remembered what it had been like for her.

It hadn’t happened overnight. She’d been in a lot of pain after the car accident, and at first the pills just made her happy again. In some ways, it was happier than I’d seen her since my dad had left and we’d sold the house. Which made me happy, too.

It always wore off, though, and then it started wearing off faster and faster. She always wanted more. When she got more, she wanted more than that. And that was the end of life as we knew it.”

Amy compares Dorothy to Amy’s mom and reflects on how addiction starts. Both Dorothy and Amy’s mom were very different people before the events leading to Dorothy Must Die. Dorothy was a happy young girl who went on an amazing adventure, and Amy’s mom was a parent who cared for her child. Magic and medication led to each changing, but the magic and medication were not responsible. In the case of Amy’s mom, the medication made her feel better and took away her pain. The happier she felt, the more her pain would bother her when the medication wore off, and after a while, she chose to rely on the medication to keep her from feeling the pain. For Dorothy, magic made her feel powerful and special, and she preferred how people treated her when she had that power. The more magic she accumulated, the more people respected her, and by the time the people of Oz realized she was draining the land, Dorothy had become too powerful to stop. Her addiction to the attention and adoration magic gave her made her crave magic’s effects.

“It was good to see her mad, actually. At least anger can get you somewhere. I liked this Indigo better than the Indigo I’d been sitting with on the rock an hour ago, the Indigo who seemed like she’d just given up. I liked this Indigo better than the one who had been so terrified that she’d wanted to leave Ollie strung up by the side of the road.”

These lines come after Indigo and Amy rescue Ollie and Amy learns that Ollie cut off his wings so Dorothy couldn’t enslave him to pull her flying chariot. The idea of the monkeys being used by Dorothy enrages Indigo, and Amy is much more comfortable with Indigo’s anger than her earlier despondency because Amy hasn’t yet learned that it’s all right to show weakness. Amy has relied on anger to see her through difficult times, even if that anger also got her into trouble. She sees anger as a source of power, rather than the volatile, unpredictable thing it is, and she doesn’t yet understand that Indigo’s anger is only a shield to cover her other emotions.

“‘Save your confession for Dorothy, outlander. Loyalty is very important in Oz. The Munchkin must be punished for her cravenness.’

‘She just told you she’s been loyal to Dorothy.’

‘Perhaps. But she was not loyal to you. Either way, she is guilty of the crime.’

‘What are you talking about? You can’t have it both ways—either she’s guilty of being disloyal to Dorothy or she’s guilty of being disloyal to me.’

‘Indeed.’ The Tin Woodman’s metal face somehow managed to look smug. ‘Now. For her punishment.’”

Here, the Tin Woodman arrests Indigo and Amy for helping Ollie, and Indigo claims she was bringing Amy to Dorothy out of loyalty. Amy argues that Indigo was disloyal to her, not Dorothy. The Tin Woodman’s response is an example of the ridiculous laws Dorothy uses to catch people in situations they can’t escape. Dorothy wants to punish people for not being loyal, but she doesn’t specify that it’s only for not being loyal to her. So the Tin Woodman can use that law to punish Indigo regardless of the truth because it doesn’t matter who Indigo was disloyal to as long as she wasn’t loyal to someone.

“They’re called Overhears. The Scarecrow makes them in his lab. They’re spies, but the good part is that they’re pretty stupid. It’s ironic, really—the one thing he hasn’t figured out is how to give them brains. They can see you and hear you, but they’re too dumb to understand anything, so they’re not so good at reporting any of it back. If you’re careful around them, they’re mostly harmless. Another one of his failed experiments.”

Pete sneaks into Amy’s cell in the palace prison and shoos the birdlike Overhears away from Amy’s window. The information Pete relays here offers additional context to the Scarecrow’s character and role within Dorothy’s inner group. The Overhears are one of the Scarecrow’s many experiments. The idea of the Overhears (spies that look like small birds and can go anywhere) is good, but without knowing what they are spying on, the invention is worthless for its intended purpose. The Scarecrow’s inability to give the creatures intelligence reflects his fears that he isn’t smart enough and suggests that receiving a brain did not make him as smart as he had hoped. Since he doesn’t have a fully functioning brain, he may be unable to duplicate intelligence to bestow on his creations.

“We were both quiet. I scraped my nails absently along the stone walls next to my bed, trying to make a mark. Any mark. It was like with Indigo’s tattoos. We all had our ways of saying I was here.”

This paragraph comes from a scene in Dorothy’s prison cell. The fact that her scratching fails to produce a mark suggests the cell is magically impervious to damage, further indicating the palace is impregnable against attack to keep Dorothy safe. The tattoos Amy references here are ones Indigo had done in magic ink on her arms. They showed Oz as it was before Dorothy took over—vibrant and full of life. Having the memory inked onto her skin made sure Indigo could never lose the Oz she loved. Even if someone messed with her memories, they would have to remove her skin to take away the images, a process that would likely kill her. The idea of leaving a mark is a bit ironic, considering that Indigo dies, but Amy carries the memory of Indigo with her, which keeps Indigo’s memories of Oz alive.

“I had been lonely a lot in my life—enough to know that there are different kinds of lonely. There’s the lonely I had felt at school, surrounded by people who only paid attention to me long enough to remind me that they didn’t like me. There was the lonely I felt when I was with my mother, which was different from the lonely that I felt when I watched her leaving just before the tornado hit, and different from the lonely that I felt when my trailer was being whisked away from everything I’d ever known.

Then there was the bottomless loneliness that I’d felt in Dorothy’s sick, white dungeon, the kind of loneliness that had made me feel like I was running through an endless maze.

Standing there in the dark, it was like all those alones had just been tiny, interlocking pieces of a picture so big that you could only see the whole thing from a mile away. Now it was clear: I had nothing except myself. No matter what happened, it would always be that way.”

Before this passage of Amy’s thoughts, Mombi has brought her to the rebellion’s caves and disappeared, leaving Amy in a void of darkness. This section discusses the different types of loneliness, suggesting that loneliness is different emotions at different times. Amy’s loneliness at school is a combination of feeling alone and hopeful that one of those interactions will lead to something meaningful. The loneliness related to her mother is also a desire that things will be different, combined with a crushing hopelessness that things will remain the same. The loneliness Amy felt in the dungeon was part desperation and part fear, and the loneliness she experiences in the darkness here is less of loneliness and more of a realization that Amy always has herself, even when she has no one else. Here, Amy realizes she doesn’t need anyone else to make her way through life and that having others around as guides or friends is nice.

“It didn’t matter. She had saved me, okay, fine, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that it still felt like a betrayal. Gert had been one thing, and then she had become something else. I didn’t understand why. I didn’t know if I wanted to.

You had to trust me, Gert said. Her lips didn’t move. But you also have to learn not to trust anyone. Even me.”

Gert has just held Amy under the water of the pool so Amy’s wounds could heal, and Amy feels betrayed because Gert reminds her of all the people who have acted kindly, only to turn on her at the first opportunity. Amy lets her past experiences dictate how she feels, which is natural but detrimental because doing so keeps her from understanding herself and the growth she needs to move beyond her past. Gert’s statements about trust seem to contradict one another—it doesn’t seem possible to both trust and not trust someone. Trust does not have to be an all-or-nothing thing. Gert is telling Amy that it’s all right to trust her (or anyone) under certain circumstances or with some things, but she’s also making it clear that people do and should keep secrets as an act of self-preservation.

“Weirdly, something my mom had told me once came back to me: You are not where you are from. She’d meant it to cheer me up. To make me believe that growing up in Flat Hill didn’t have to define me for the rest of my life.

But the witches thought I was special because of where I came from.”

These reflections come after the witches tell her she is special because she’s from the same place as Dorothy and that they believe this makes her uniquely qualified to end Dorothy’s rule. Amy questions this because there’s nothing special about Kansas or who she was there. Remembering something her mother said shows that she doesn’t hate her mom and foreshadows how her relationship with her mother will drive her character development in later chapters. The idea of the place we’re from influencing who we are has some merit, though not in the same way it does for Kansans in Oz. In Oz, being from Kansas gives someone the power to influence the world. On Earth, the location of someone’s birth doesn’t give them any mystical advantage, but the circumstances of where we are born can offer advantages. Being born in a place and into a family with power and influence allows someone to start their journey with resources that will make life easier. However, this does not mean that someone without those advantages can’t accomplish great things—only that someone who isn’t born with advantages will need to work harder.

“‘Memoria,’ he whispered.

When he opened his hand, there was an emerald inside.

‘This moment is now captured forever. There are emeralds like this embedded in the road. They’re meant to deliver messages, scare people, spread Dorothy’s decrees. Basically a way for the palace to keep us in line.’

He tossed the emerald on the ground. An image rose up from the stone, hazy at first and then snapping in focus. I was rolling my eyes at him. He was leaning in to pull my hair. But it almost looked like he was giving me a kiss.”

This conversation takes place during Amy’s first training session with Nox. The memoria spell is responsible for the earlier projection of Ozma that Amy, Indigo, and Ollie saw on the Yellow Brick Road. Memoria is defined as an artificial memory aid, which in the case of Oz, includes magic. The spell is used to record something that can then be replayed at any time, and like much of Oz’s other magic, Dorothy has found a way to use this spell against the people. The Ozma memoria in Chapter 7 is a reminder that the people should be happy despite the tyrannical rule over them. Using Ozma’s image is another way to destroy hope. Seeing Ozma promoting Dorothy lends the impression that Ozma approves of what Dorothy does, even though she does not. The memoria that Nox creates here serves no purpose in this book, but it may be used later in the series.

“When I first saw Glamora just a few days ago, I thought she was the scariest thing in the world because I had thought she was Glinda. But now that I’d seen the real Glamora, I wondered if maybe she was scarier than Glinda after all.”

Glamora and Glinda are twins, and Glinda doesn’t want to be mistaken for her sister on the battlefield—so she marred Glamora’s face so people can tell them apart. The story makes Amy realize that evil doesn’t always look ugly. Glinda is just as stunning as Glamora, but Glinda’s wicked nature runs deep enough to harm her own family for her best interests. Amy also realizes that those who do the most outwardly evil things are not always the most frightening or dangerous. Glamora’s calm assurance that she won’t hesitate to kill her sister is scarier than anything Amy has seen Glinda do thus far. The real Glamora is composed and put-together and quietly dangerous, which makes her seem more powerful than Glinda’s shows of power.

“‘What do you think you would be like?’ I asked. ‘You know, if it weren’t for Dorothy. If you’d had the life you were supposed to?’

He looked at me in surprise, like it was something he had never even considered. ‘I...’ He paused. ‘I don’t know. That’s the funny thing, isn’t it? As much as I hate her—as much as I wish Oz was how it was supposed to be, that we could all just be happy—I would be a totally different person, then. I can’t even imagine who I would be. Maybe someone better, I don’t know. Maybe someone worse. I like who I am.’ He rolled his eyes and laughed ruefully to himself. ‘Maybe I owe her.’

‘Let’s not get carried away here,’ I said. But I knew what he meant. It was like me and my mom. Yeah, she’d been pretty crappy at the whole parenting game, but what if she hadn’t been? Who was to say I wouldn’t have turned out like Madison Pendleton?”

This conversation between Amy and Nox comes after Glamora enhances Amy’s appearance while Amy and Nox are struggling to find who they truly are. Nox’s inner debate about who he’d be without Dorothy’s influence shows how events outside our control shape us, whether we want them to or not. If Dorothy hadn’t risen to power, there could have been someone else in her place, and Nox could have become the same person he is in Dorothy Must Die. Nox’s inability to picture who he would be without Dorothy’s influence shows his deep devotion to the rebel cause, and the idea that he owes Dorothy shows how comfortable he is with himself. He hates Dorothy, but he recognizes her influence on his life—an influence he believes is positive.

“I looked at Nox as he took in the landscape.

Seeing him like this, away from the caves, away from the cause, I could almost see the boy he could have been. The boy he would have been if Dorothy had never come back. He looked happy. He looked beautiful.”

These lines come while Amy, Nox, Mombi, and Gert fly to take on the Lion. To Amy, Nox almost looks like a different person in flight, which supports the idea present in many fantasy novels that flight equates to feeling weightless and free. As a follow-up to Amy and Nox’s earlier conversation about who Nox would be without Dorothy, this passage shows one possibility. Amy thinks of Nox as the boy he “could” have been here, supporting the idea that there is no one way we should be. Under different circumstances, Nox might have turned out any number of ways. Amy sees him as free of responsibility as she ever does throughout the novel, and she likes what she sees.

“But she had been there. She had sacrificed herself to save us. No, forget that. She had done so much more. Even if I had never quite been able to figure out—never really been able to tell where the Good ended and the Wicked began for her—I had known, by the end, that she had believed in me. Not just as the one who would be able to defeat Dorothy, but as Amy Gumm.”

This passage of Amy’s thoughts comes right after Gert’s death. Amy feels Gert’s loss keenly because—of all the witches in the rebellion—she had the closest relationship with Gert and felt the most comfortable in Gert’s presence. In Chapter 13, when Gert held Amy beneath the water, Amy believed Gert was wicked because her actions felt wicked. Between then and this point in the story, Amy waffles about Gert’s alignment, and following Gert’s death, Amy realizes that a single action doesn’t define who someone is. Gert has done good and wicked things since Amy met her, but each of those actions is far less than the care Gert has shown Amy.

“Around teatime, we almost crossed Dorothy’s path. It was impossible not to hear her coming. Her red high heels clicked unnaturally loudly through the halls, as if amplified by magic. Not to mention she brought with her the heavy footfalls of her bodyguards and the tittering of her entourage, a group of gaudily dressed Dorothy-appointed beauty experts and jesters, all of them constantly jabbering about how wonderful she was. I wanted to get a look at my target, but Hannah yanked me away.

Dorothy was never alone, I realized. It was unclear whether that was a tactical decision—or maybe even she couldn’t stand to be alone with herself.”

Amy is working in the palace when Dorothy passes nearby. Amy’s observations offer insight into what might drive Dorothy’s lust for recognition and power. The constant compliments rained on Dorothy from her entourage suggest that Dorothy may not have much self-esteem because she requires others to tell her how wonderful she is. The clicking of her heels is likely a tactic she uses to draw attention to her. Amy’s closing thought suggests that Dorothy knows she’s a fraud and might keep people around her to block out her inner voice telling her things that she doesn’t want to hear.

“I took a deep breath and moved behind her. I grabbed the brush from my pocket and pulled it slowly through Dorothy’s thick auburn locks. Her hair smelled like lemons and sunshine. I expected there to be a rotten note underneath, but there wasn’t. It was all sweetness and light. This is what evil smells like, I realized.”

Amy, promoted to lady-in-waiting, brushes Dorothy’s hair. This is the closest Amy’s been to Dorothy, and Amy is surprised by how appealing Dorothy is. If Dorothy didn’t act or speak in a way that revealed her wicked nature, a casual observer might not realize how evil she is. Amy’s observation that Dorothy smells like pleasant things supports the idea that evil isn’t always obvious. In appearance, Dorothy might be the last person others would think is cruel. Her appearance and sweetness are a disguise. Evil smells like over-the-top goodness in order to hide itself.

“All I wanted to do was collapse into bed and sleep for a million years, but I couldn’t until I got myself cleaned up. As I washed the blood from my hands in the little basin by the cupboard, the sounds of bones cracking and feathers flapping echoed in my head. When I closed my eyes, all I saw were Maude’s twisted, injured wings falling into the grass.

I shuddered. Doing Good had been uglier than I’d expected it to be.”

These lines come after Amy helps Ollie and his sister (Maude) escape the Scarecrow’s laboratory. Intellectually, Amy knows that cutting off Maude’s wings was what she wanted, as well as an assurance that the monkey will not be enslaved again. However, cutting them off is difficult, leaving Amy feeling conflicted about what’s right versus what’s good. Cutting off the wings was right because it was what Maude wanted, but it didn’t feel very good. This passage contrasts with the one where Amy brushes Dorothy’s hair and notes how evil smells like goodness. Here, goodness takes the form of mutilation and pain, things not typically associated with doing good.

“‘Oz has been through many changes,’ she went on. ‘Oh, people talk about the real Oz, but I don’t even know what they mean by that. Oz has rarely stayed the same for long. That’s the magic, of course. Always changing.’”

Jellia speak these lines as she works alongside Amy, and they call to the idea that there is no such thing as normal. People develop an idea of how they think things are supposed to be, which is often defined by how things were at the best time they can recall. Jellia’s observations speak to the consistency and certainty of change. Perhaps the idea of the “real Oz” is better than the place Dorothy has made it, but even within that better Oz, there were still changes that went on. There is also no proof that the “real Oz” is what Oz is supposed to be—it is simply how most people remember it. Jellia’s recollection of so many changes also suggests she’s much older than she appears, likely the case since she’s a witch.

“In my dream, I scoured the cobblestones of the throne room, cleaning up Jellia’s blood. It was exactly how I’d spent my afternoon, except when I was finished I didn’t move on to preparing the guest bedrooms for the mayor of Gillikin’ s entourage like I had in real life. Instead, I moved on to the hallways and the ballroom, the kitchen and the solarium, every room of the palace smeared with blood and in desperate need of cleaning. The sounds of my scrubbing echoed through the empty palace. Whatever happened here, I got the feeling it was my doing. I wasn’t sure if Dorothy’s palace being an abandoned, bloody mess was a good thing or a bad thing.”

Amy has this dream the night after Jellia’s brutal takedown by the Lion. This dream sums up Amy’s fears and hopes, though the hopes are more difficult to see. The fear is clearer—she worries about the outcome of the rebellion and the lives that will be lost (hence, blood that will be spilled) in the process of overthrowing Dorothy. The sheer amount of blood in her dream makes Amy question whether the impending conflict is worth its casualties. At the same time, Amy hopes that the losses will be worth the gains for Oz and its people.

“No matter how tough you think you are, there are certain things that just get to you, and they’re usually the little things. The ones you don’t expect.

I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye. It was only one, but still. I couldn’t believe that Mom had changed so much.

It hurt my feelings a little, that she had done it all without my help, but it made me proud, too. Proud of her. Suddenly I missed her very badly.”

This passage comes as Amy watches her mother through the magic painting for the final time. Amy’s mom has cleaned herself up and been sober for six months, and her progress makes Amy realize how much she misses and loves her mother. Amy’s character arc is complete here. She no longer holds on to the anger at her mother that propelled her to learn magic and hone her combat skills. Instead, she’s found the power of caring and the strength of letting herself feel emotions other than anger. If there is a moment in the book where Amy wishes she could go home, this is it. The fact she doesn’t means she recognizes that, though she loves her mother, their lives have gone in different directions. Amy is part of Oz now, and there is no going back.

“Meanwhile, Dorothy danced, hopping and shimmying and twirling. Some of the bolder guests—a fine-featured Winkie dignitary, a dashing-looking pirate with a wooden leg—attempted to dance with her, but she warded them off with wild glares, never breaking her motion. She was like a tornado, clearing her own space on the dance floor. It was manic and, in a way I didn’t care to think about, sort of sad.”

This scene is part of the ball. Dorothy has just started the party, and she dances by herself, which sends a few messages about her character. First, she either believes or wants others to believe that she doesn’t need anyone. Dorothy is fixated on making herself appear strong, and dancing with anyone would, in her mind, undercut that image of strength. The reference to a tornado links Dorothy to the storm that brought her and Amy to Oz. Tornados are wildly dangerous but typically only last for a short time before they burn themselves out. This may be a metaphor for Dorothy and her unwieldy collection of magic. She is terrible and dangerous, but like a tornado, she may only be able to keep her hold on her power for so long before her strength begins to wane. Amy’s observation that Dorothy seems sad shows how power cannot make us happy. Dorothy is a force all her own, but her level of power is not something she can share without losing her hold on it, something she’s unwilling to do.

“‘Oh, Amy. I’ve learned a bit of magic, here and there, since I returned to Oz, but let’s face it—I’ll always be a bit of a humbug when it comes to that sort of thing. My real wizardry has nothing to do with spells at all. It has to do with knowledge. I knew about you the moment you arrived here, didn’t I? Even the most unbreakable of spells are meant to be broken. You just need to know a thing or two. It’s the knowing things part that just so happens to be my specialty.”

Amy meets up with the Wizard in the book’s final chapter. The Wizard referring to himself as a “humbug” is a nod to the 1939 movie, in which the Scarecrow called the Wizard a humbug after discovering that the Wizard didn’t possess any magic. While the Wizard has learned to wield magic, he still believes his ability to research and understand is his greatest strength and an advantage within Oz. The Wizard crediting his knowledge of events to his wits rather than magic shows that magic isn’t necessarily the most powerful force in Oz. The Wizard can be just as effective at keeping tabs on what’s happening as Dorothy is, possibly more because he is less self-centered than Dorothy. Specifically, the Wizard’s research has given him the key to undoing the magical protections around Dorothy so she can be stopped, information that will play a central role throughout the rest of the series.