The final section in which Elphaba travels to self-exile in Kiamo Ko shows how the image of the wicked witch is constructed. Elphaba attempts to learn the secrets of dark magic from the Grimmerie, a book of secrets that is the object of the Wizard’s journey to Oz, and this section provides explanations for much of the iconic images of the Wicked Witch of the West that most readers expect: the pointy hat, the flying monkeys, the broomstick. By this point, Elphaba has lost her lover, her family, and even her passion. She descends into a kind of madness, but never achieves the wickedness associated with her.

Continue reading What Makes Elphaba Wicked?

Flannery O’Connor’s fiction is a place where the world is more grotesque and ambiguous than what is expected. Just as James Joyce uses stream of consciousness techniques to present a world that is familiar and strange at the same time, O’Connor engages point of view perspective to provide insight both into her own motivations for writing and the motivations of her characters in ways that are at times perfectly aligned and other times disjointed.

Continue reading Flannery O’Connor: Everything That Rises Must Subvert

Then there is the fact that from the kidnapping victim in “Oldboy” to meth kingpin Walter White, modern day readers of the story have been fully conditioned to root for the guy seeking vengeance, regardless of the nature of the wrongs they are seeking to right or the method by which such revenge is achieved.

Continue reading Montresor: The Charm of the Psychopath

When Phil Resch is trying to convince a dubious Rick Deckard of his irrefutable humanity, his explanation relies upon the fact that he owns a squirrel which he keeps in cage equipped with a wheel which circles around and around as the squirrel runs inside it. He never gets anywhere, but still the squirrel seems to Phil to be perfectly content with the illusion of … Continue reading Rick Deckard's Perceptual Dissonance