Yay Elphie.Īnother thing that definitely worked for me is the admittedly brief friendship between Galinda (later Glinda) Boq, and Elphie during their time at Shiz. She’s even somewhat repaired the emotional scarring caused by The Wizard of Oz.

Elphaba proved herself to be a strong, sarcastic protagonist, one well deserving of the accolades heaped upon her. Even before I met the teenage Elphie, I was already firmly in her corner, and that’s coming from someone who was seriously freaked out by the Wicked Witch and her nightmare-inducing flying monkeys as a slightly traumatized four-year-old. There’s always at least two sides to every story, and I adore it when an author manages to give us a different side to a story, to flip everything on its head and leave us, the readers, rooting for the “bad guy” of the story. So…prickly, idealistic Elphie is very much in that mold of protagonist that I generally melt (pun unintended) over. From a young age, we all know that it ended in water….įirst of all, I’m a bit of a sucker for the underdogs, and I tend to side with the misunderstood villains pretty easily. Building from there,we watch as life slowly but surely begins to shape and then destroy her. In fact, Wicked opens shortly before Elphaba, the little green girl the world will know as the Wicked Witch of the West, is even born. As one might deduce from the title, the book tells the story of the Wicked Witch of the West, beginning long before Dorothy Gale somehow manages to crash her house, killing the ruler of Munchkinland in the process. A huge critical success, Wicked is known not only for its striking music, superb acting, (Before Elsa of Arendelle, Idina Menzel was best known for her part as Elphaba Thropp) and plot, which was based on the plot of the book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West by Gregory Maguire. Many people would recognize the above lines as being taken from the chorus of “Defying Gravity,” which is probably the single best known song from the award-winning musical Wicked. “I think I’ll try defying gravity, and you can’t bring me down!”

Wicked by Gregory Maguire