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    A Study Guide for Gregory Maguire's "Wicked"
    A Study Guide for Gregory Maguire's "Wicked"
    A Study Guide for Gregory Maguire's "Wicked"
    Ebook55 pages47 minutes

    A Study Guide for Gregory Maguire's "Wicked"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Gregory Maguire's "Wicked," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJun 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535842990
    A Study Guide for Gregory Maguire's "Wicked"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Gregory Maguire's "Wicked" - Gale

      10

      Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

      Gregory Maguire

      1995

      Introduction

      Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West is the first adult novel that Gregory Maguire published after a distinguished early career writing fiction for children. It should be stressed that this novel covers adult themes and includes descriptions of adult sexual experiences, as well as significant violence, and is not recommended for younger readers.

      In Wicked, Maguire explores the back story of two characters from L. Frank Baum's fictional land of Oz: the Wicked Witch of the East and the Wicked Witch of the West. Were they really wicked? And if so, what made them that way? He tells the story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, who is born mysteriously green, very smart, somewhat prickly, and with a deep devotion to equal justice for all creatures in a world ruled by despots. He also tells the story of Galinda, who later changes her name to Glinda, who begins life as a spoiled and vain socialite and becomes a powerful sorceress. Whether Glinda is a good witch or not is ambiguous, although she is clearly not as tormented as either Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, or her sister Nessarose, the Wicked Witch of the East. Neither sister sets out to become wicked, in fact, both sisters consider themselves to be working for the good, Elphaba by resisting the oppression of the Animals, and Nessarose by enforcing her vision of the virtuous Unionist religion on Munchkinland. One of Maguire's central themes in the book is the ways in which a quest for virtue and justice can itself warp the seeker, leading him or her down paths that are as destructive as those against which they rebel.

      Author Biography

      Maguire was born on June 9, 1954, in Albany, New York. His mother, Helen, died giving birth to him. He and his three older siblings were split up among relatives, and for a short time, the baby was placed in an orphanage. His father, John, a newspaper reporter, eventually married Marie Mc Auliff, a poet, and reunited the family, adding a couple more siblings along the way. Maguire's history with the Wizard of Oz has its roots in his childhood. After seeing the movie on television, Maguire led a group of siblings and neighborhood children in a performance but expanded the cast to include Tinker Bell, Captain Hook, and Peter Pan. In an interview with Bev Goldberg on the American Library Association's Web log AL Inside Scoop, he recalled that he told the other children we need to have more than one bad guy so we can see who is worse. That particular game was interrupted when his stepmother discovered in the nick of time that Maguire's thirteen-month old brother was suffocating in a hiding place under the porch. The baby was fine, but an imagination was fired. Maguire produced several hundred manuscripts between the ages of eight and eighteen, but as he told Book selling This Week, he was hopelessly fecund but not talented enough to be considered a wunderkind. He completed his bachelor's degree at the State University of New York at Albany and his doctorate in English and American studies at Tufts University. While he was a student, he wrote a children's book titled The Lightning Time, which was published when he was twenty three.

      He taught and codirected the Simmons College Center for the Study of Children's Literature and founded Children's Literature New England in 1985. Although

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