The Tin Man’s other nonhuman companion, the Cowardly Lion, has found a new life in the 21st Century. He has been elected by the citizens of Oz to serve as a councilman. His campaign featured a notable slogan: Rallying Oz Against Reform (ROAR). For our lion, the present operations of Oz are fine and there is no need for any of the changes that his opponent proposed. Those with a lot of money and power fully deserve what they have acquired. Those without money or power also deserve their unfortunate status in Oz society. There is a just balance that is not to be disturbed.
Like the Scarecrow, our Cowardly Lion had helped to create a shard in Oz that was equivalent to the MAGA-minders. In his case, political power was used to create his version of reality rather than the educational power that the scarecrow engaged unsuccessfully. The Cowardly Lion also held the advantage of appealing to the elderly male population of Oz. They sat back, applauded the Lion, and even sent him some of their hard-earned money they had saved for their retirement.
We see in the Cowardly Lion’s campaign of roaring, a shattering of any coherent value system. He ceased to take risks on behalf of the welfare of another person as he did in helping Dorothy to find her way back to Kansas. Instead, he sat back and advocated a value-free deference to power and wealth. He cashed in the money he had raised during his campaign. Though he lost his second election to remain a councilman, he had been able to divert enough money from his campaign chest to live comfortably ever after in the Emerald City.
Shattering of Dorothy
What about Dorothy? Under the stress of mid-21st Century life, Dorothy began to revert back to the perspective she held while living in Kansas prior to her visit to Oz. She once again yearned for escape to a land that exists beyond the rainbow and failed yet again to acknowledge the value inherent in the relationships that she now had with people who lived this side of the rainbow.
I borrow from a tale told by Philip Slater (1970, p.8) in his book about loneliness, for it fits very well with what I imagine to be the life being led by Dorothy in the 21st Century.
Dorothy is seeking to escape from the unsatisfying relationships that exist in her current 21st Century life. She goes to live alone in a cottage she had found in a Kansas forest. The cottage and the forest remind her of Oz. She was content at first but a bitter Kansas winter has led her to cut down the trees around her cottage for firewood. The next summer in Kansas was very hot. Dorothy was uncomfortable because her cottage had no shade. She complained bitterly of the harshness of the elements—and longed for her time in Oz.
Dorothy made a little garden and kept some chickens; but rabbits were attracted by the food in the garden and ate much of it. Dorothy went into the forest and trapped a fox, which she tamed and taught to catch rabbits. But the fox ate up Dorothy’s chickens as well. She shot the fox and cursed the treachery of mother nature and wild creatures. Why aren’t the animals of Kansas more like her friend, the Cowardly Lion?
