The Hero’s Journey

A friend and I hashed this topic out a bit last night. We seemed to have a bit of a disagreement on the following two questions:

— In the Wizard of Oz, what’s the Call to Adventure?

— What’s the Refusal of the Call?

My initial gut feeling was that Dorothy’s Call to Adventure was a subtle one:

TO APPRECIATE HOME.

Dorothy’s Call was to find contentment in her surroundings. An emotional challenge that she initially resists. This “adventure” ultimately supports the whole theme of the story: THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME.

Dorothy running away with Toto was the physical manifestation of her emotional Refusal of the Call.

Then she met Professor Marvel, signifying the “Meeting with the Mentor” (Step 4). The Professor encouraged Dorothy to heed the Call; ultimately instructing her to return home and appreciate the people who love her. In their first meeting, Professor and Dorothy verbalize the Call and Refusal quite clearly in the following exchange:

PROFESSOR: Oh, yes – you – you wanted to go home, huh? (the Call)
DOROTHY: Oh, no, I wanted to go along with you. (the Refusal)

The theme of “THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME” was taken and applied to the larger world of Oz. The b/w world is in fact a microcosm of what happens in color later in the movie. The Elixir (Step 12) is Dorothy’s realization that there’s no place like home, and her whole journey through Oz is aimed at getting home with the help of her Allies while dodging the tests and ordeals being set by her Enemies.

Another theory worthy of study is that Dorothy’s Call was to run away from home, and then the Refusal of the call was to go back home. What’s unconventional about this is that the meeting with the Mentor occurred before the Refusal, and the Mentor literally encouraged her to refuse. I’m not sold on this theory.

While I’m thinking about it, I submit my interpretation of how the classic Hero’s Journey applies to The Wizard of Oz:

1. Ordinary World – Kansas. A seemingly boring, dull place for Dorothy.

2. Call to Adventure – The challenge for Dorothy to appreciate home. This is the tricky one.

3. Refusal of the Call – Dorothy runs away with Toto.

4. Meeting the Mentor – Captain Marvel encourages her to go back home, essentially heeding the Call to appreciate home.

5. Crossing the First Threshold – Dorothy leaves Kansas and enters the world of Oz.

6. Tests, Allies, Enemies – Find the Wizard, meet the three friends, dodge the witch and monkeys. (This all supports goal illustrated in the Call.)

7. Approach the Inmost Cave – Confrontation with the witch.

8. Ordeal – Dorothy gets incarcerated by the witch.

9. Reward – The party kills the witch, obtaining the necessary broom Dorothy needs to get home.

10. Road Back – Second meeting with the Wizard.

12. Resurrection – Dorothy realizes the value of home, friends, and love. She’s a new woman.

13. Return with the Elixir – With this knowledge, she learns that she had the ability to go home all along. She takes what she’s learned and returns home. There’s no place like it.

Arland said:

The Wizard of Oz is all over the Vogler book because it typifies the Hero’s Journey and the steps, taken in order. But I think that the Call and Refusal steps are a little muddy only in that Dorothy is not really presented with a real choice once she lands in Oz.

True. This is why I tend to think that her real choice is to “appreciate home”. It is in fact her Call to Adventure. Once she lands in Oz, her task, as laid out by Glinda, is to follow the Yellow Brick Road. Why? To meet the Wizard, and ultimately get home. Following the Yellow Brick Road was a means to an end; it was Dorothy’s physical method of heeding the Call. (The deeper message revealed at the end is that the Call could’ve been heeded all along. All she needed to do was listen to her heart.)

Arland said:

I agree that the Call to Adventure was some form of “appreciating home” and the refusal of the call may be her decision to run away with Toto. But then the problem arises not so much, in my opinion, with the order of the Mentor stage (because it can be argued that Glenda, as Mentor, gives Dorothy “guidance and the ruby slippers that will eventually get her home” – Vogler, page 18), but with the idea that the hero must make an affirmative decision (after the refusal) to heed to the call. It must be a choice and she must make it.

I’d argue that structurally, Glinda isn’t the classic Mentor, nor is the Scarecrow, Tin Woodsman, or Lion. These folks may have traces of the Mentor’s attributes, but it seems they’d all fall under the group of Allies as listed in Step #6. Your point that Dorothy’s not faced with a real decision after talking to Glinda further convinces me of this.

Arland said:

In the Wizard of Oz, Vogler offers that “Crossing the First Threshold” is the “moment Dorothy sets out on the Yellow Brick Road” (Vogler, p. 18), but what choice does she really have at that time? I should review that scene again to see if she has an option to do anything else but follow the road, but if memory serves, she’s just killed the Wicked Witch of the East by dropping the house on her and now she has the ruby slippers on so she’s kind of screwed. Does she have the ability to stay with the Munchkins if she wants? I don’t think so.

Precisely. This is why searching for Dorothy’s Call in Oz is so confusing, and why I suspect Vogler may have been on glue the night he wrote Page 18. I stand by my notion that the true Call (to appreciate home) occurs in her heart back in Kansas. She refused it, met the Mentor (Captain Marvel), and then heeded it.

What’s interesting is that her Call sort of evolves from an emotional “appreciate home” in Act I to a physical “get home” in Act II, which brings us full circle to her appreciation of home at the end of the story.