The Lion Killing the Spider

The Lion Killing the Spider marks the culmination of the Cowardly Lion's long arc from self-confessed coward to the acknowledged King of Beasts. The event takes place in a deep, ancient forest that the travelers enter after leaving the Dainty China Country. The Lion immediately declares the forest "perfectly delightful" and expresses a wish to live there forever, a stark contrast to the gloom the Scarecrow perceives. The party soon hears a low rumble of growling animals and discovers a clearing where hundreds of beasts of every variety—tigers, elephants, bears, wolves, and foxes—are gathered in a troubled meeting. The biggest of the tigers approaches the Lion and hails him as "King of Beasts," explaining that they are all threatened by a fierce new enemy: a tremendous monster like a great spider, with a body as big as an elephant and legs as long as a tree trunk. This creature, the tiger reports, seizes animals with one of its eight long legs and eats them as a spider does a fly, and it has already devoured all the other lions in the forest. The Lion, after a moment's thought, asks if the beasts will bow down to him and obey him as King of the Forest if he puts an end to their enemy. They roar their assent, and the Lion marches proudly away to fight the monster, bidding his comrades good-bye. He finds the great spider lying asleep, its body covered with coarse black hair, a great mouth with a row of sharp teeth a foot long, and—crucially—a head joined to its pudgy body by a neck as slender as a wasp's waist. This gives the Lion his strategy. Knowing it is easier to fight the creature asleep than awake, he gives a great spring and lands directly on the monster's back. With one blow of his heavy paw, armed with sharp claws, he knocks the spider's head from its body. He watches until the long legs stop wiggling, confirming it is quite dead, then returns to the opening where the beasts are waiting and announces proudly that they need fear their enemy no longer. The beasts bow down to him as their King, and he promises to return and rule over them as soon as Dorothy is safely on her way to Kansas. This event is the Lion's final, unambiguous proof of the courage he sought from Oz, achieved not through a magical potion but through his own decisive, strategic action in defense of others.