Flying monkeys

In The Wizard of Oz, the flying monkeys turn a childhood movie outing into a shared moment of fear for Thomas Birdsey and Dominick Birdsey. Their importance lies not in any independent role outside the film, but in how the scene links fear between the twins, draws a harsh response from Ray, and is eventually reinterpreted as theatrical illusion.

Appearance and Role in the Film

The flying monkeys serve the Wicked Witch and swoop down to kidnap Dorothy. That attack is the image Thomas cannot bear: he cries so hard that Dominick, who at first does not think the figures are frightening, begins crying too. The twins’ fear takes hold through watching and feeling together, rather than through a danger they encounter directly.

The Movie-Theater Incident

Ray takes the boys out into the lobby and yells that they are ruining Ma’s nice day. He ridicules them as scaredy-girls and threatens to take them to a store to buy dresses. The episode makes the monkeys a trigger for Ray’s shaming as well as for the twins’ distress: their fear is treated as a failure of masculine toughness, not as an understandable response to the film’s kidnapping scene.

The Spell and the Reveal

The film’s ending reverses the threat. Once the Wicked Witch melts, the spell is broken and the flying monkeys become nice; the narrator adds that they were not monkeys at all, but men. The correction turns the frightening creatures into figures in costume, exposing how the scene’s menace depended on the witch’s power and the boys’ view of it. Remembered alongside the lobby rebuke, the reveal also sharpens the contrast between the film’s release from enchantment and Ray’s refusal to treat the children’s fear gently.