Even by its end, I am still unsure of some of the aspects of its storytelling and world-building that L. Frank Baum was striving for. And I believe to come to such hard conclusions, notably from one's first voyage to the land of Oz, would be irrelevant as its resonance and influence lie in the intimate irony and inconclusive questions that have come through its grand scope.

Dorothy's thrust into this world is skeletal in its context, a decision that undoubtedly brings forth the reader with as little pre-conceptions as possible towards the world she is about to explore and the characters that she would meet. Its purpose, beyond just wanting to return home, is elusive, stimulating one to raise certain questions and seek for something perhaps beyond the surface that it provides.

These musings that I have reveal themselves more like the texture of sand rather than solid concrete, with its shape easily malleable to the thematic ideas and character revelations that come my way. Concepts of colonisation, hero-worship, vanity, political ambition, inauthenticity, self-actualisation, success through purity and innocence, are all passing ideas that blossomed the story of Dorothy and her path through the yellow brick road. Baum has created a world that feels so familiar and yet so transportive and elusive to the rigid structures of our reality.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a title that conveys the false prophecy of a species' saviour and the vanity of its own existence, is a marvellous novel. It walks the tightrope of child-like warmth and purity, whilst highlighting the corruptive darkness that surrounds its wide-eyed protagonists. Dorothy's ambition to return home is not as critical as the ideas that she learns, or to be more accurate - what we hope she would be more privy to, as the journey slowly reveals the disillusioned reality of adulthood. I sometimes question whether staying in Oz would have been better for her.