Audience with the Wizard

The Audience with the Wizard marks the decisive rupture between Elphaba and the established political order of Oz. Having traveled from Shiz University to the Emerald City with her roommate Glinda, Elphaba sought to present the Wizard with evidence of the murder of her mentor, Doctor Dillamond, and to plead for justice for the oppressed Animals. The encounter, however, became a brutal lesson in the nature of power, leaving Elphaba stripped of her naive faith in institutional reform and setting her on a path of clandestine resistance.

Journey and Preparation

The journey from Shiz to the Emerald City took more than a week, a bleak, cold-scoured passage through a landscape of failing farms and desperate poverty. Glinda and Elphaba traveled as third-class passengers, huddling together for warmth in lumpy beds above inn kitchens. The land outside grew less succulent and varied; overgrazed fields were dotted with cows whose withers were shriveled and papery. Once, Glinda saw a farm woman standing on her doorstep, hands sunk deep in apron pockets, her face lined with grief and rage at the useless sky. The farms gave way to deserted mills and abandoned granges before the Emerald City rose abruptly on the horizon, a city of blanket declaration that made no sense, clotting up the horizon like a mirage. Glinda hated it from the moment she saw it. The carriage passed through one of the northern gates, and the scramble of life aroused itself in an urban key, less restrained and self-forgiving than that of Shiz. The Emerald City was not amused by itself; its high self-regard sprang up in public spaces, ceremonial squares, parks, and reflecting pools. Off the boulevard branched alleys where shelves of tin and cardboard served as roofs for a flood of indigents—children, diminutive Munchkinlanders, dwarves, and Gillikinese bowed with hunger and strain. A Quadling woman in a shawl lifted a small apple to the child in a sling around her neck. A sort of civil army strolled in foursomes on every second or third street, brandishing clubs and angular with swords. It took five days for the two young women to make it past the gatekeeper, the receptionists, and the social secretary, sitting for hours awaiting a three-minute interview with the Commander-General of Audiences. Elphaba, a hard, twisted look on her face, managed to eject the words "Madame Morrible" from between her clamping lips. They were told they would have four minutes between the Ambassador to Ix and the Matron of the Ladies' Home Guard Social Nourishment Brigade, and that the dress code was formal—a regulation they were obliged to ignore, being unequipped with courtly dress.

The Throne Room Encounter

At three the following afternoon, everything running late, the Ambassador to Ix left the Throne Room looking agitated and splenetic. The Commander-General of Audiences appeared and warned them that the Wizard was not in a good humor due to reports of a riot in the Ugabu district in the north of Winkie Country. Two stoical doormen opened a set of tall double doors, carved with sigils and other occult hieroglyphs, but the throne did not lie before them. Instead, the antechamber led left, and through an archway there was another, on a shifting axis to the right, and another beyond that, and another—like looking through a reflection of a corridor in mirrors set opposite each other, veering inward. They made a circuit through eight or ten salons, each slightly smaller than the other, each steeped in a curdled light that fell from leaded panes above. At last the antechambers concluded at an archway into a cavernous circular hall, higher than it was wide, and dark as a chapel. Antique wrought-iron stands held ziggurats of molded beeswax burning with a multitude of wicks, and the air was close and slightly floury. The Wizard was absent, though they saw the throne on a circular dais, inset emeralds gleaming dully in the candlelight. Elphaba remarked that he had stepped out to use the toilet. Then the candle flames suddenly all genuflected, obeisant to a sour wind that beat from the area of the throne. The dais was pelted with thick drops of rain, and a shudder of homegrown thunder blatted out. On the throne was a skeleton of dancing lights—luminescent bones hitched together to suggest something vaguely human. The rib cage flexed open like two fretted hands, and a voice spoke in the storm, not from the skull but from the dark eye of the storm where the heart of the lightning creature should be, in the tabernacle of the rib cage. "I am Oz, the Great and Terrible," it said, and shook the room with its related weather.

The Confrontation

Glinda, seeing Elphaba terrified by the rain, introduced them both. The Wizard asked if they had gossip about Madame Morrible, but Elphaba refused to be diverted, insisting they were there on more important business. She pulled papers from her sleeve—Doctor Dillamond's well-argued Theory of Consciousness Inclination—and declared she had news of the murder of a great scientist and the suppression of his important discoveries. The Wizard dismissed Dillamond's work as "derivative, unauthenticated, specious garbage" and "what you'd expect of an academic Animal." When Elphaba insisted that what was happening to the Animals was immoral, the Wizard replied, "I do not listen when anyone uses the word immoral. In the young it is ridiculous, in the old it is sententious and reactionary and an early warning sign of apoplexy." He told her it was not for a girl, a student, or a citizen to assess what was wrong—that was the job of leaders. Elphaba shot back, "Do you know what resistance means?" The Wizard only laughed instead of killing them on the spot. He asked if Madame Morrible had brought them in, and when Glinda said they were only sophisters, he seemed to consider. He then recited a passage from the Oziad about the Kumbric Witch rearranging the world, concluding, "Beware whom you serve." Then he was gone, the gutters in the floor gurgled, and the candles went instantly out.

Aftermath and Consequences

At the carriage, Glinda settled in and guarded Elphaba's place against other passengers, lying that she was saving the seat for her sister. She reflected on how much she had changed in a year and some—from despising the colored girl to claiming they were blood. But Elphaba did not board. She tossed a couple of oranges, a hunk of cheese, and a loaf of bread into Glinda's lap, saying, "This'll have to do you till your stop this evening." When Glinda asked what she meant, Elphaba said she was not going back to Crage Hall. "I'll find a place to study on my own. I'll not be part of—Madame Morrible's—school—again." Glinda cried out, but Elphaba stood on the mounting tread, telling her to tell the others she had kidnapped her and made her come. "They needn't look for me, Glinda, for I'm not going to be findable. I'm going down." She kissed Glinda and murmured, "Hold out, if you can. Hold out, my sweet." The driver clucked the reins, and Glinda craned her head to see Elphaba drift back into the crowds. For all her singularity of complexion, it was astounding how quickly she became camouflaged in the ragamuffin variety of street life in the Emerald City. Elphaba hadn't cried, of course; her head had turned away quickly as she stepped down, not to hide her tears but to soften the fact of their absence. But the sting, to Glinda, was real.