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Themes In The Wizard Of Oz

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A place with munchkins, witches, wizards, and a girl name Dorothy trying to get home to Kansas in other words Oz. This 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz is on the top 100 American Film Institution (AFI) list because of the many themes, symbols, and motifs. According to Thomas C. Foster the author of How to read like a professor and Reading the silver screen themes, symbols, and motifs helps readers or film watchers to understand literature or movie plots better. In his books, he teaches us how to interpret and find these features in peoples works. In How to read like a professor it focuses more on the plot while the Reading the Silver Screen focuses more on the techniques of the film. If we apply his work to the film, we will be able to appreciate it more and have a better understand while this film continues to be watched after so many years. Starting from the beginning of the movie Dorothy, the main character sings a song about being over the rainbow and as she sings there 's a rainbow over her. Foster describes rainbows as it “forms the most obvious set of connections … and [that] their meaning runs as deep in our culture as anything you care to name” (How to Read Literature like a Professor 74). The rainbow is symbolic and can be interpreted as a place beyond the ranch in which Dorothy has not discovered yet. A connection that can be found quickly is that the rainbow foreshadows Oz. The use of rainbows is still used in recent works that tend to be written with a similar or

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