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Salman Rushdie, in his essay “Out of Kansas,” presents an intriguing, insightful analyzation of the famous film and book The Wizard of OZ. He starts by explaining how the production inspired him to write his first story, entitled, “Over the Rainbow.” As a young boy he and his family traveled a lot and amidst the travels, the short story was cultivated. A ten year old boy who grew up in Bombay stumbled upon a rainbow that was as wide as a sidewalk and was crafted like a grand staircase; he began to climb it. Unfortunately, the details of the story were lost to Rushdie’s memory, but he continues in his essay to connect his own childhood to several variables in The Wizard of OZ. He compared his Father to the Wizard and the prospect of him going to school in England to the journey Dorothy took to OZ. He came to the realization that his father was a very bad “wizard” but a very “good man”. Throughout the rest of the essay, Rushdie analyzed the film, The Wizard of OZ and quite honestly put the story, along with all the actors in it, under a rather negative light.  For example, he stated that, “Anybody who has swallowed the script writer’s notion that this is a film about the superiority of “home”… has been fooled. Whether his analysis is correct or not, it spoiled a lot of the magic and whimsical elements from the story for me. I used to consider the tale to be blissfully charming; now, lots of the magic is gone.

    

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