Diana Peterfreund has a thought-provoking post on her blog about characterization and agency — in the sense of acting or exerting power. She writes, in part:
When you have a very normal character in a very extraordinary situation, there is a strong temptation to just let things happen to her. Let her be swept along in the tide of all the extraordinary things. Let the extraordinary people around her start making her decisions for her. I guess it works, but for my money, the really unforgettable stories are when the ordinary person overcomes these forces and makes decisions for herself. Maybe they’re the wrong decision, but at least they’re decisions.
She also makes an observation about the protagonists of Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland: Dorothy exhibits agency; Alice does not.
Another layer of interest to that comparison is that at the end of Alice in Wonderland, it’s revealed that the adventures were a dream. Alice was therefore de facto cast as a passive observer, the dreaming self, or perhaps even more precisely the waking self observing the dreaming self.
(Not that dreams must always be experienced passively; I often alter mine, sometimes scripting whole storylines — an experience very close to that of writing fiction, incidentally.)
Hmmm.
Been known to alter my dreams too.
Interesting.
AIW was a dream? I asked Sailor Boy, and he concurred, but I think Looking Glass might not have been a dream. I always liked Looking Glass better, but I think I just liked the chess framing better than the cards.
Of course, in the movie version of Oz, Dorothy had been dreaming, too, and the scarecrow et al, were really her uncle’s farm hands. But I don’t think that’s how it went in the book.
Holy smokes I completely forgot about Oz being a dream. I read the book when I was a kid, can’t remember now if it used the dream device too . . . wonder if it’s public domain & on the net . . .
Looks like the original Wizard of Oz wasn’t done as a dream —
http://www.put.com/oz/wizoz.html#24.
Dorothy now took Toto up solemnly in her arms, and having said
one last good-bye she clapped the heels of her shoes together three
times, saying:
“Take me home to Aunt Em!”
Instantly she was whirling through the air, so swiftly that
all she could see or feel was the wind whistling past her ears.
The Silver Shoes took but three steps, and then she stopped so
suddenly that she rolled over upon the grass several times before
she knew where she was.