70 pages • 2 hours read
Danielle PaigeDorothy Must Die
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Everyone Deserves the Freedom to Choose
The ability to make our own choices is one of the strongest powers we possess. When that ability is taken away, quality of life has the potential to plummet as the decisions we once took for granted become someone else’s to make. Dorothy Must Die explores the consequences of having choices taken away and the emotional impact of not being able to make our own choices through the Wingless Ones, Amy’s position among the rebellion, and the leaders of Oz.
The Wingless Ones are an example of what happens when choice is taken away. The monkeys’ natural wings are enchanted so they are susceptible to being controlled. While no explanation is given as to why, the cause of this susceptibility matters less than the result, which is monkeys being used by Dorothy and, before her, the witches. Between the witches and Dorothy, the monkeys experienced a period of freedom where no one used their wings to enslave them. When Dorothy rose to power and started enslaving monkeys again, many monkeys sliced off their wings to keep themselves free. Though the wings are a natural part of who they are, they realized that they were more than their wings and used their freedom of choice to choose not to be controlled. Being used by parties seeking power in the past have made the monkeys distrustful toward anyone seeking their services because they do not want to be deprived of their will to choose who they help and why. Freedom of choice brought them self-assuredness, and the threat of that freedom being removed makes them believe that “compromise is death” (336).
Similar to the monkeys, Amy values her right to make her own decisions. In Kansas and during her first days in Oz, her ability to choose is severely limited by those around her—first her mother, then Dorothy. Once she teams up with the witches, she believes she will have the freedom to choose what to do next, but as she trains and learns more about the plan to kill Dorothy, Amy wonders if she really can choose or if the choice is being made for her because it’s what the witches want. Amy’s debate shows how we can lose our freedom to choose without even realizing it. Amy believes she’s making her own choices until she helps Ollie and realizes that her choice didn’t change anything. Instead of making a difference to the rebellion, her choice only changed how and when she would be a weapon. By the end of the book, Amy isn’t sure who to trust and remains unattached to any group because it’s the only way to assess what people want from her so she can make choices based on what she wants, not what others expect of her.
While Amy and Ollie symbolize the power of choice and how it influences who we become, Dorothy’s rule represents how choice can be made into a trap. It is never made clear how Dorothy returned to Oz—whether she came back of her own accord or someone brought her back. Regardless, once she arrives, she strips the people of Oz of all decisions except for how to show their allegiance to her. While the people of Oz could choose to oppose her, the consequences of doing so do not make that a choice worth making. As a leader, Dorothy is all kindness and love for Oz until something happens that she doesn’t like. Then, she becomes a tyrant, punishing people for the most minor transgressions. Dorothy robs her people of the ability to make choices without punishment, which also deprives her of the freedom to be who she wants to be. If she wants to keep her power—and she does—she believes she must maintain her stranglehold on Oz’s people.
The characters of Dorothy Must Die face seen and unseen barriers to making their own choices. Even the most powerful among them are trapped, and it’s only after Ollie and Amy shed the expectations of others that they start to find true freedom of choice. Each character has a right to choose what they want, but once they make that choice, they must live with the consequences and, if they wish to continue as they are, make further decisions that align with their goals. The freedom to choose is about making decisions and about which consequences we are willing to live with.
Balance Equals Stability
The Land of Oz relies on balance to thrive. When the balance is upset, the land falters, and the people of Oz can no longer live as they once did. Through goodness versus wickedness/right versus wrong and the state of magic, Dorothy Must Die shows how balance is essential for existence.
Goodness and wickedness are one of the many balances in Oz. Before Dorothy’s arrival, the land of Oz relied on a balance of good and wicked witches to keep the land thriving. With Dorothy’s arrival and turn to wickedness, the balance was corrupted, which caused problems with magic. To keep Oz from failing, witches who once identified as wicked became good, and as a result, the definitions of right and wrong were skewed. In Oz, right and wrong were associated neither with goodness nor wickedness, as both were necessary for stability. Following Dorothy’s ascent, right and wrong took on different meanings depending on who used them. To the rebels, rightness means restoring balance, while wickedness refers to Dorothy’s ruthless rule. However, to Dorothy, rightness is anything that benefits her, while wickedness applies to those who would stop her. The wielding of right and wrong for a purpose allows these opposing concepts to be given power they don’t implicitly hold—for example, Dorothy claiming wrong/wicked people want to take magic she stole to save the land. The balance of good and wicked or right and wrong is a complicated one that is not fixed by the end of the book, and the way the balance sea-saws shows how easily balance can be disrupted.
Like goodness and wickedness, magic plays an essential role in the balance of Oz. The Land of Oz itself relies on magic to survive. Before Dorothy’s rule, magic was equally spread throughout Oz. Dorothy stripped magic from the land in her quest for power, leaving much of Oz to die. This imbalance parallels the climate crisis facing Earth. Years ago, the Earth had the resources (magic) it needed for its many ecosystems and creatures to thrive. As humans stripped the resources from the land with actions such as deforesting and polluting, the Earth’s balance faltered. It is never said what will happen to Oz if the balance of magic in the land reaches the point of no return. It’s likely that, similar to how enough damage could make Earth’s recovery impossible, Oz may be doomed if Dorothy upsets the balance enough.
While a balance of magic is essential for Oz to survive, that is not the only balance magic requires. Magic itself maintains a balance by how it allows itself to be used. In Chapter 17, Gert tells Amy that harnessing magic is simple because “magic always wants to be something different from what it already is” (158). This concept eventually lets Amy use magic and suggests that Dorothy’s hold on Oz is not absolute. Magic relies on change to keep its balance. In Emerald City, Dorothy makes magic obey her by harnessing it to her whims and keeping things the same—exactly how she wants them. In doing so, she upsets the balance magic wishes to keep, which likely means the magic will eventually reach a point where its desire for balance becomes stronger than Dorothy’s control. This idea may be applied to power in the real world. Societies are like magic—they want to be kept in balance. The more someone tries to suppress society, the more society resists, until the power isn’t enough to keep society in check. Like with magic, change requires outside influence—such as a spell being cast. In this way, Amy is a balancing force for magic, as she allows it to be what it wants to be. On a societal level, Amy is the catalyst Oz needs to retake itself from Dorothy’s grasp.
When balance is in place, stability follows, but finding balance is not a stable process. Oz and its magic show how everyone is affected when balance is upset and how balance seeks to restore itself after turmoil. The battles between goodness and wickedness, Amy and Dorothy, and magic with itself symbolize the instability that leads to balance being found again
Learning Who We Are Gives Us Power
The characters of Dorothy Must Die struggle with finding who they truly are. Changes in their situations and views make it difficult to find a core identity that allows them to be strong. Through Amy and Nox’s character arcs, Ollie and his sister making new wings, and the witches of the rebellion, Dorothy Must Die explores how finding ourselves makes us powerful.
Young adulthood is a time of identity struggle, as seen by how Amy and Nox search for themselves. Amy faces the most external changes throughout the book. From leaving Kansas and landing in Oz to becoming a rebel and finally striking out on her own, Amy is constantly bombarded with changing situations that don’t give her time to think about who she is. At the beginning of the book, she dislikes who she is but isn’t sure how to change. In Chapter 17, Gert tells Amy that, to do magic, she needs to find “the essence of what makes you you” (160). Initially, Amy isn’t sure what this means, but as her confidence grows, she learns that strength gives her the ability to define her identity. The time and resources she dedicates to training only let her see who she is in terms of the rebellion. By the end of the book, Amy has spent time with both sides of the conflict and learned she is a fighter who’s willing to do the right thing for Oz—and that she doesn’t need to be part of a rebel group to do it. Similarly, Nox struggles with his identity. From a young age, he’s trained to overthrow Dorothy, and the mission is his identity. Without Dorothy’s threat, he wouldn’t know who he is, and by the end of the book, he has not spent enough time away from the witches to see what else life can offer. Without those multiple perspectives, he cannot find who he is and whether his true self matches his rebellious self.
Similar to Amy’s multiple perspectives teaching her who she is, Ollie and the Wingless Ones also find who they are after living life differently from how they’d always known it. Though the Wingless Ones don’t regret slicing off their wings, they still yearn for the ability to fly. At the end of the book, Ollie’s sister invents wings that the monkeys can wear to fly without fear of being controlled. As seen by how comfortably and easily Ollie and his sister rescue Amy and later carry Amy and Ozma to safety, these new wings do not make them afraid to be who they are. Rather than shying away from aligning themselves with anyone, the monkeys choose to help Amy because they do so of their own free will and because they believe in what Amy stands for.
While Amy and the monkeys find who they are after living different lifestyles, the witches of the rebellion show how who we think we are isn’t always who we truly end up being. Before Dorothy’s overthrow, Gert, Mombi, and Glamora believed they knew who they were and, equally important, who their enemies were—namely, one another. After Dorothy’s rule unbalanced Oz, the witches banded together to protect their home, which made them realize that what they stood for before was no longer who they were. Where they once viewed each other as opposing forces, working together makes each realize that the other two are not the enemy and that goodness or wickedness does not define someone. Throughout the book, all three do things that may be taken as good or wicked, but the actions themselves do not define them. Rather, the intentions behind the actions define the women as protectors, and knowing this about themselves allows them to work together and be more powerful than they ever were apart.
Whether it’s growing toward or away from people, finding who we are brings us strength. We cannot deny our true natures for long because everything in us strives toward them, as shown by Amy and the witches finding their protective instincts, the monkeys finding a way to fly without being controlled, and Nox not reaching his full potential by the end of the book. As the situations around the characters change in the rest of the series, their true selves may shift, and remaining open to these changes will let them keep their power.
