pat loughery

A few days back I wrote about a new friend who recommended Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West to me.

I’ve been reading it for the last few days, trying to decide if I want to finish it or not. And I just hit something that hooked me, and shone a big ol’ spotlight on the moment.

To bring you up to speed, we are reading a Prehistory of the Wizard of Oz, looking particularly at the life and times of Elphaba, who will later be known as the Wicked Witch of the West. We see that she is born to an absentee father (a minister, raging against the pleasure-religion) and a used-to-be-socialite mother. She’s also born green of skin, bony, with razorlike teeth. Her first words as a child are “Horrors”.

Years later, we see her again entering college, withdrawn and unsociable, still green of skin and unmistakeably ugly. By chance, of course, her dormmate is Galinda (who will later become the Good Witch).

Months go by without conversation between the two young ladies. And one day, they stumble into conversation. Elphaba is reading a book containing the sermons of the early unionist ministers, describing the nature of evil. In that conversation, their first, we see these words:

Elphaba: “I just think, like our teachers here, that if minsters are effective, they’re good at asking questions to get you to think. I don’t think they’re supposed to have all the answers. Not necessarily.”
Galinda: “Oh, well, tell that to our boring minister at home. He has all the answers, and charges for them, too.”

I’m hooked. I can’t wait to go back to the restaurant and talk to my new friend about that little passage.