There's no place like home

Salman Rushdie's review of the Wizard of Oz is extremely thought provoking and interesting to read. While I've been watching the film since I was very young, you don't realize the messages it presents until you are an adult. This is fascinating because Rushdie presents the argument that in the film, adults are portrayed as inadequate. Dorothy's Aunt Auntie Em and Uncle Henry are incapable of helping her save her dog Toto. They seem undermined by the evil woman who supposedly owns half of the county. To the other adults in the film, Dorothy seems like a small child with minuscule problems and all of their farm animals running all over the place and other little issues seem much more superior to Dorothy's needs. In a frustrated mind set, Dorothy is transported to Oz. There, by complete mistake, her house is dropped on the Wicked Witch of the East. Without even trying, Dorothy becomes the heroine to the people of Oz. They look up to her both in mind but also physically, as the munchkins are much shorter than her. Without even trying she begins her journey to "adulthood". As the film continues and she is accompanied by the brainless scarecrow, the heartless tin man, and the cowardly lion, she becomes their heroine as well as she is bringing them to the Wizard of Oz who will hopefully get them what they need to feel sufficient. By the end of the film, when Dorothy, again by accident, melts the Wicked Witch of the West, as the witch becomes melted and lowers to the ground, she again looks up to Dorothy as the little girl who has been able to kill her, something she did not think possible. Rushdie points out that Dorothy's journey from Kansas to Oz was her right of passage to adulthood and also made her realize that although she is this heroine character in the colorful, beautiful, land of Oz, and gains all of these friends who look up to her as well as a new found courage, all she wants to do is go home to the town where she was considered a child her whole life. By the end of the film, Dorothy truly felt that "there is no place like home", and upon realizing this was able to return home to her family that she had a new appreciation for.