by Daniel Farnkoff

Created on: April 24, 2008

One of the most memorable fantasy villains of all time is the Wicked Witch of the West as portrayed by actress Margaret Hamilton in the MGM movie of 1939. Memorable villains, while inspiring fear and hatred in an audience, usually have a certain charisma and a penchant for clever turns of phrase, i.e., "memorable quotations" that can offer an alternative perspective on their actions and/or give insight into the nature of evil. Hamilton's witch, although apparently committed to wickedness for wickedness' sake, gives hints as to some of her more understandably human motivations in some of her dialogue. In the end, however, it is a semi-comical devotion to cruelty that marks her character and that has established this witch as an icon of evil.

When we first meet the Wicked Witch, she is an aggrieved relative of the deceased Wicked Witch of the East. The Wicked Witch of the East, about whom we learn very little, has perished in a bizarre accident, crushed to death by the tornado-tossed farmhouse of the Gale family. Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, is among the first to implicitly ascribe homicidal intent to Dorothy when she asks what kind of witch Dorothy happens to be. Indeed, to the denizens of Munchkinland, Dorothy appears more as the heroic and supernatural pilot of the witch's vessel of destruction than as an unwilling passenger- they hail her for her accomplishment, and Dorothy coyly accepts their worshipful attentions.

The Wicked Witch of the West enters the scene to find that her sister has been killed by a stranger to Oz, a beautiful and apparently powerful creature who carries herself with an affected air of innocence.

Dorothy has, however inadvertently, drawn first blood in what will be a harrowing conflict between herself and the witch. The Witch's motivation for her hatred of Dorothy is fairly simple and sympathetic: Dorothy killed the the Witch's sister, apparently in order to steal her ruby slippers, and the Witch has vowed to repay Dorothy in kind. We understand the witch to be motivated by a mixture of loyalty and greed. An underlying current of jealousy is also suggested by her method of addressing her rival: "I'll get you, my pretty , and your little dog, too." The witch's reference to Dorothy's nature-endowed physical appearance reminds us of Dorothy's childishly "prejudiced" pronouncement from earlier, that "witches were old and ugly."

The witch also makes reference, later on, to "her loneliness", in a sarcastic welcome to Dorothy and Toto as they are delivered to the castle by the flying monkeys. The witch's sarcasm and dark sense of humor are part of what has continued to endear her to modern audiences. Her usage of murderous one-liners and semi-humorous threats predates such modern masters of the form as Arnold Schwarzenegger: "How bout a little fire, scarecrow?", "Want to play ball?", "I'll make you into a beehive!", etc.

Finally, the Witch asserts her humanity in a bit of pathetic and incongruous self-pity during her watery demise: "What a world, what a world!" Like a death-row serial killer railing against society, she reminds us that the seeds of evil lie in all of us, in our ability to locate the source of our troubles and misfortunes in a whole host of scapegoats, drawn variously from the ranks of the mighty and the meek. Although Dorothy was the primary target of the witch's rage, we feel here that her hatred was wider in scope, and can infer from this existential scream that the Witch's life of wickedness has consisted in no small part of personal suffering and misery. This final utterance makes her uncomfortably familiar.

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