Take home test- Essay

The Wizard of Oz
By: Tyler Keith









ENG 4UE
October 18, 2008


In Warner Brother’s The Wizard of Oz, a girl named Dorothy Gale gets caught in a tornado and swept away to a magical place called Oz. While there she meets up with people she can consider friends, and they point her towards a man known as the Wizard who will help her find her way home to Kansas. As she begins her quest, she comes across a character by the name of the Scarecrow. As time and the journey progress, the two meet their other two compatriots, the Cowardly Lion and the Tin Man. This journey is stereotypical because, as is typical to most fantasy setting journeys, there is a villain intent on stopping the hero and the road is long and full of hardships. Due to the unique nature of the characters the movie can be analyzed a number of different ways. One of the ways that this movie can be criticized is by using Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis theory because it has characters that exemplify the concepts of Id, Ego, and Super Ego.
According to Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis there are three components that all humans are born with. Those components are Id, Ego, and Super Ego. They begin to grow and develop within the first five years of a person’s life. The factors that influence how these fractions of the human mind mature are the people that the individual looks up to as role models, as well as who they were raised by and how they were raised. For example, one who was raised thinking it’s ok to take what you want whenever you want will more than likely have a more dominant Id, while someone who’s taught to watch out for other people and their needs are will be more lenient on the area of Super Ego. These three work together to form a person’s psyche. This will affect a person’s behaviour towards other people. Ultimately it influences a person’s entire life, their entire state of being. The existence and the individuality of the human race in based on, and revolves around the individuality of the Id, the Super Ego, and the Ego.
The Id portion of the mind primarily deals with the want of an individual that controls a persons wants. If the Id were the primary controller of the brain than a person would do whatever is needed to get what they want with no regard to the feelings others or how it would affect them. Although the Id is typically portrayed as bad, it is not. It is typical, however for the villains in most movies to have the Id being the dominant fraction of their brain. The Wicked Witch of the West is one such example. She is the villain and is willing to do anything to get the red slippers of her later sister, The Wicked Witch of the East. Those slippers are on the protagonist of the movie, Dorothy. In her attempt to get the slippers from Dorothy she causes much fear among the main character and her friends.
While she is the dominant expresser of the Id fraction, she is not the only one with the Id in the forefront of her mind. Dorothy and her friends, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow, also exhibit the qualities of the Id. Throughout their entire quest, their goal is to get something for themselves. Dorothy begins her quest because she wants to go home. She gives no thought to how it would affect others, she just wants to get home. Her friends join her quest to “…see the wizard,” (Dorothy, Wizard of Oz) for very selfish reasons. The Scarecrow wants a brain, the Tin Man wants a heart, and the Cowardly Lion wants courage. In the beginning all join the journey for personal glorification. Although these characters do not have their Id being dominant throughout the entire movie, they do, just as all humans do, have moments of weakness, in which they succumb to their desires.
The Super Ego is a person’s conscience. The sense of what is right and what is wrong comes from the Super Ego. People who exhibit a dominant Super Ego will tend to be more shy/timid. It is also responsible for the feeling of guilt. It is also the desire to please those that the person/character considers important. While it is dominant in certain characters all people, possess the Super Ego.
The character who’s Super Ego is very visible in this movie is the guard at the Wizard’s Emerald Palace in Oz. In a moment of weakness he denies Dorothy and her friends access to the palace. As Dorothy sits down, and begins to cry because she thinks that her quest has failed, the guard opens his peephole and sees her. He is overcome with grief and for that reason alone, that couldn’t bear to see her cry or quest fail, he opens the door and allows them access to the wizards palace.
Another character who has a somewhat dominant Super Ego is the Good Witch Glinda. She is only seen at the beginning, the end and for a brief part during the middle of the movie. It was this Good Witch who pointed Dorothy on her way in the first place and told her where to go and what to do to find her way home. This can be seen as shy because otherwise she would have gone on the quest with Dorothy to help her find her way home. As a result of her timid behaviour and her eagerness to please, the Good Witch can be classified as having a dominant Super Ego.
The third and final characteristic is the Ego. The Ego is the side of a person’s mind that is shown to the world. It makes decisions and therefore action based on what is wanted by the Id and Super Ego. It tries to appease one party’s desire while keeping the other party content. It could be said that the Ego acts as a moderator between its two counterparts.
Dorothy is the character, in the movie, whose Ego faction is most visible. She knows that her friends have needs, and that she need has to get home too. Thus the Ego shows itself by finding a way to placate the Id with her desires of getting home, and at the same time it is able to satisfy the Super Ego. An example of this is when the group confronts the Wizard in his palace. Dorothy tells him that “[He] promised Mr. Scarecrow a brain”(Dorothy, Wizard of Oz). Her Ego side does this action for two reasons. One of the reasons is to suit the Super Ego with the pleasing of someone else. It does this because it can pacify the Id with the knowledge that her turn is coming to have her wish granted.
Another person who shows a dominant Ego is the Wizard himself. After he has given the wishes to Dorothy’s companions he finds a solution to her wish in which he leaves the magical Land of Oz with her. He agrees to bring her with him in his contraption, which will take them both back to Kansas, he being a “…native to Kansas [himself]…”(the Wizard, Wizard of Oz). This action pleases both his Super Ego, because he’s helping someone else, and his Id because he is fulfilling his desire to leave the Land of Oz.
As can be seen, the combination of the Id, Super Ego and the Ego form how a person thinks and acts. Since all three of these are formed at an early age, and draw on the person’s life experiences to change and grow everyone’s lives are different. Everyone will have a different Ego, Super Ego and Id. As is obvious, Dorothy must have had a good mentor or parent figure when she was a child to have the strong Ego that she does. The Wicked Witch of the West on the other hand clearly did not have any role model from which to learn from. That or she had an example that was also deficient in the areas of Ego and Super Ego. This is why Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalytic criticism is applicable to the movie the Wizard of Oz. It has characters that exemplify the portions of the mind know as the Id, the Super Ego and the Ego.





















Bibliography
http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Wizard-of-Oz,-The.htmlThe Wizard of Oz, Unknown,