On My Shelves: The Tin Woodman of Oz

 

Woot the Wanderer is, as his name says, a wanderer of Oz, originally from the Gillikin country, who arrives in his travels at the Palace of the Tin Woodman. That worthy, always interested in newcomers, has Woot brought in and asks him to tell of himself and his travels. But after this, as Woot is enjoying a dinner (which, naturally, neither the Tin Woodman nor his current companion, the Scarecrow, partake of), Woot asks how the Woodman came to be made of tin.

 

The Woodman recounts the story – how he came to love a Munchkin girl named Nimmie Amee, how the Witch for whom she worked learned of this and, when Nick Chopper (the Woodman's true name) refused to give up his suit for Nimmie Amee's hand, enchanted his axe to cut Nick instead of the wood, and how as he successively lost pieces of himself, a tinsmith that he was acquainted with replaced the pieces with functional and bright tin limbs. But as he reaches the end of the tale, the Tin Woodman realizes – with prompting by Woot – that he has made a dreadful error of action.

 

In the end, he had left Nimmie Amee not because she ceased to love him – for she actually preferred him as tin – but because, having lost his heart, he could no longer love her, so he set out on a quest to find a heart. Then, caught in a rainstorm, he rusted and stood for an unknown time until Dorothy rescued him, and by the time he actually gained a heart, Nimmie Amee had been nearly forgotten.

 

(There are some inconsistencies in this story compared to the original in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz – for example, Nimmie Amee's mistress was not the Witch herself, and it was also implied that rather than being caught in some random forest, the Woodman had been standing rusted not far from his own cabin (thus the convenient oilcan in the cabin). For purposes of this novel, we take this new set of events as canon.)

 

This error of action the Woodman immediately resolves to attempt to remedy; he will find Nimmie Amee, and, if she still loves him, will bring her back with him to be Empress of the Winkies, even though his heart, alas, is merely a kind and not a loving heart, and so he will be fond of her, but not in love with her.

 

Woot and the Scarecrow accompany him on this quest. They elect to avoid the Emerald City by going slightly north through part of the Gillikin country, and are temporarily captured by the Loons, a race of balloon-people who dislike trespassers. They manage to escape without much difficulty, however, and continue on until they find themselves in a valley with a single structure, an immense purple stone castle which is in reality more like a rectangular house with two enormous doors and two small windows.

 

Approaching, they find that there is a nameplate on the castle: "YOOP CASTLE". The Scarecrow remembers that Mr. Yoop, the Giant, is imprisoned in a cage far, far away, and the travelers decide this means that it is deserted and they can use it for shelter.

 

They are wrong. Living within the castle, alone and perfectly contented to do so, is Mrs. Yoop, the giantess, and a Yookoohoo – a magician whose power is to transform one thing into another, without apparent limit.

 

And Mrs. Yoop, while of a calm and unruffled demeanor, does not like trespassers… and does like to amuse herself.

 

Here we meet the second of the primary villains of Polychrome, and a frightening woman she is, allowing for Baum's target audience. Mrs. Yoop has already captured and transformed into a canary none other than Polychrome, Daughter of the Rainbow, despite all of Polychrome's own inherent power. She imprisons the group within her castle, shows no fear of even Ozma's retribution, and carefully and calmly decides what amusing shapes to transform the adventurers into. Even more frightening is the fact that she can actually include mental attitudes as part of a transformation; when Woot is changed into a green monkey, he is furious… until she says that he's perfectly happy and contented, and then he is.

 

Woot and the others realize that they are in terrible danger. Intellectually Woot still wants his own form, but he knows that with her powers it would not take very long for Mrs. Yoop to make him accept and eventually enjoy his new shape and role in life. Fortunately, with Polychrome's help they are able to discover one of the keys to Mrs. Yoop's power, the lace apron she wears, and steal it. They escape, leaving the castle locked behind them so she cannot pursue (at least, until she makes another apron or similar device). Unfortunately they cannot use the apron's power to undo the enchantment; Mrs. Yoop had warned them that she could not UNdo her transformations, and this appears to be the case.

 

But they are free, and after a few adventures including a hungry Jaguar and several Dragons, the group head south, hoping to eventually reach Glinda the Good. But Ozma and Dorothy have seen Mrs. Yoop's deeds in the Magic Picture, and so by following their travels manage to meet our friends at the ranch of none other than our old friend Jinjur, former leader of the Army of Revolt.

 

Ozma manages to break the transformations of Polychrome, the Scarecrow, and Tin Woodman, but Woot's is not so easily done; it seems that the Green Monkey form must always exist, and while it can be transferred, the one to whom it was transferred would then be stuck forever as the Green Monkey. This seems a conundrum, since it would be unfair to ask someone else to bear that burden, until Polychrome points out the obvious symmetry; transfer the shape of the Green Monkey to Mrs. Yoop – which not only permits Woot to regain his old shape, but removes Mrs. Yoop's ability to use her Yookoohoo magic, a suitable punishment for her crimes.

 

With their forms restored, the little group can then resume their quest…

 

The Tin Woodman of Oz is one of the most uneven of the Oz books, and probably the one I least like overall, even though it has some very nice elements within it.

 

The overall quest and its resolution – discovering first that the Tin Woodman was not the only Tin Man in the world, that said Tin Soldier (named Captain Fyter) had fallen in love with the same girl in the years that Nick Chopper had stood rusted in the forest, and finally that Ku-Klip, the tinsmith, had made a combined man from their remains, a man called Chopfyt… who ended up marrying Nimmie Amee – is simultaneously a letdown, and a rather low-comedy letdown at that. It does not paint Nimmie Amee in a good light, either – and indeed none of the primaries in this love quadrangle come out of it looking terribly good. In this sequence I think I see something of Baum's stage ideas leaking into the story without being hammered into a shape more suited for a novel.

 

Despite being quest-guided, this book also has more of the "travelogue" feel, and a lot of the little events along the way seem to serve little more purpose than to add a bit of whimsy – and page count – to the novel. In all honesty, I think The Tin Woodman of Oz hits its peak in the encounter with Mrs. Yoop and its resolution.

 

This novel did, however, provide me with the character of Mrs. Yoop, the second and perhaps more powerful of the two main villains of Polychrome. Allowing for what a children's author would put into a book, and judging by her sociopathic behavior, once I was older I deduced that Mr. Yoop had probably done far worse to Mrs. Yoop than "kick me in the shin", and done it for a long time. No wonder she was utterly unconcerned with his disappearance, and indeed happy he was gone. Her power, her intelligence, her ability to plan and her cold calculation hidden behind beauty and control, made her a perfect candidate for a villain. And the anger, fear, and hatred engendered by being forced to endure, for countless years, the near-powerless form of the Green Monkey would take those elements and transform her, in turn, into something far worse.

 

Still, this is definitely one of the weakest Oz novels, and if you were going to skip one… well, I'd say read this one up to the point that the Green Monkey is transferred, and then move on.