Several years ago, I read through all fourteen Oz books by L. Frank Baum with my second son. They are fun fairy tales, although few of them are very interesting. Most have a loose plot that is summed up in chapters of the form encounter a situation, talk a bit, resolve a situation.
For the past several months, I have been reading the series again, this time with the younger boys. I was excited to start The Scarecrow of Oz the other day because my recollection was that this book, which has almost nothing to do with the eponymous Scarecrow, contains one of the most chilling stories in all of literature.
A few chapters in to the book, the protagonists enter the kingdom of Jinxland, which is part of the Land of Oz that is geographically separated from the rest by impassable mountains. Jinxland is currently ruled by the paranoid King Krewl. On their way to the castle, our protagonists meet Pon, a distraught young man who works for the royal gardener. Their conversation reveals that Pon is in love with Princess Gloria, who loves him as well and wishes to marry him, but is banned from doing so by her uncle, King Krewl. When the protagonists point out that a princess ought not marry a commoner, Pon reveals his lineage: he is the son of the previous king! His exposition lays out the story:
“My father used to be the King and Krewl was his Prime Minister. But one day while out hunting, King Phearse—that was my father's name—had a quarrel with Krewl and tapped him gently on the nose with the knuckles of his closed hand. This so provoked the wicked Krewl that he tripped my father backward, so that he fell into a deep pond. At once Krewl threw in a mass of heavy stones, which so weighted down my poor father that his body could not rise again to the surface. It is impossible to kill anyone in this land, as perhaps you know, but when my father was pressed down into the mud at the bottom of the deep pool and the stones held him so he could never escape, he was of no more use to himself or the world than if he had died. Knowing this, Krewl proclaimed himself King, taking possession of the royal castle and driving all my father's people out. I was a small boy, then, but when I grew up I became a gardener. I have served King Krewl without his knowing that I am the son of the same King Phearse whom he so cruelly made away with.”
The fact that the Oz natives are immortal is well established in the earlier books. Mortals such as Dorothy who come to Oz do not share this quality, which is occasionally a plot point in the earlier books. In Ozma of Oz, the central plot is about a group of good Ozites going to the neighboring Land of Ev to rescue their royal family from the Nome King, who has magically transformed them into ornaments. Ozma and company would never want the rightful rulers of Ev to spend eternity as a nome's baubles.
Here, in Jinxland, we get the first mention in Oz of a character being essentially killed. Keep in mind, however, that even as Pon points out, they are not actually killed.
Right after Pon gives this explanation, he is asked about Princess Gloria's father, to which he responds,
“Oh, he was the King before my father,” replied Pon. “Father was Prime Minister for King Kynd, who was Gloria's father. She was only a baby when King Kynd fell into the Great Gulf that lies just this side of the mountains—the same mountains that separate Jinxland from the rest of the Land of Oz. It is said the Great Gulf has no bottom; but, however that may be, King Kynd has never been seen again and my father became King in his place.”
This is how Pon relates the story. Ten chapters later, after Ozma has sent the Scarecrow to Jinxland, the Scarecrow describes the succession a bit differently:
[The Scarecrow] told how Gloria's father, the good King Kynd, who had once ruled them and been loved by everyone, had been destroyed by King Phearce, the father of Pon, and how King Phearce had been destroyed by King Krewl.
It seems that King Kynd's falling into the Great Gulf was no accident.
By the end of the story, Krewl is deposed, Pon and Gloria are wed, and the two are installed as the rightful rulers of Jinxland, to much celebration and fanfare. The Scarecrow explanation that both King Kynd and King Phearce were "destroyed" may be true, since the fiction does not clearly define the boundaries Ozites' immortality. Indeed, perhaps The Scarecrow of Oz is the canonical explanation. Being held underwater and crushed by rocks does seem like it would be hard to come back from, but we know the Nome's Magic Belt let him turn people into ornaments with no lasting effect on their well-being. Endlessly falling similarly does not sound lethal, especially since in Tik-Tok of Oz, the main characters fall through the Hollow Tube, which ran from Oz all the way through the center of Earth to come out on the other side in the land ruled by Tititi-Hoochoo. Incidentally, that tube was created by a Magician...
“...who tumbled through the Tube so fast that he shot out the other end and hit a star in the sky, which at once exploded.”
“The star exploded?” asked Betsy wonderingly.
“Yes; the Magician hit it so hard.”
“And what became of the Magician?” inquired the girl.
“No one knows that,” answered Polychrome. “But I don’t think it matters much.”
Even the Magician who shot into space and blew up a star with the force of his impact is not necessarily dead nor destroyed.
Maybe the Scarecrow is correct in his pronouncement that both Kynd and Phearce have been destroyed, but maybe this is, in fact, a coup. Ozma rules over all of Oz, but she knows that the geographically-isolated region of Jinxland is prone to rebellion, and King Krewl is not one to bow to her wishes. On the contrary, Pon and Gloria both seem amenable to maintaining Ozma's preferred political order. So, Ozma sends her emissary—the charismatic and clever Scarecrow—to help arrange the coup. The people cheer at Krewl's elimination, for he was an unjust ruler. This allows the Scarecrow to emerge as the hero and subsequently to install Pon and Gloria as the new rulers, both of whom vow fealty and gratitude to Ozma. Pon and Gloria both know their claims to the throne depend on their fathers' disappearances. Despite the prevalence of magic in the kingdom—in characters such as the Wizard of Oz and Glinda the Good, or in artifacts such as the Magic Belt—they damn their fathers to eternal suffering and isolation while their people rejoice at their ascendancy.
That is the most terrifying story in fairyland. It brings an entirely different light to the claims made throughout the series that all the subjects of Oz love Ozma, how they all believe her to be kind and good, and how people throughout fairyland believe her the greatest, wisest, and most beautiful ruler. They all know what may happen if they don't toe the line.
Beware ye to whom Ozma sends the Scarecrow.
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