“Are we cannibals, let me ask?: Or are we faithful friends?”: Food, Interspecies Cannibalism, and the Limits of Utopia in L. Frank Baum’s Oz Books

Despite the utopian nature of L. Frank Baum’s Land of Oz, a recurrent theme of cannibalism undermines its status as a halcyon land of benevolent fairies, kindly talking animals, and marvelously odd creatures. The need to eat and the ensuing search for food—daily activities that undergird biological existence—are never overlooked in Oz, and this bodily realism deflates the magical fantasy of these modern-day fairy tales. Baum describes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and, by extension, the entire series as “a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heartaches and nightmares are left out”; he explains that he eliminates “the stereotyped genie, dwarf, and fairy . . . together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents designed by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale” (WWO 4).¹ However, if the nightmare of cannibalism surfaces repeatedly throughout the texts, how well does Baum succeed in his goal to modernize and “Americanize” the fairy tale?² The continual focus on food, cooking, and eating, along with the ways in which these activities sustain and undermine civilization, provides a strong countercurrent to elements of Oz that constitute it primarily as a utopian wonderland.³ Osmond Beckwith suggests that the “internal evidence” of the Oz series “must contradict the sentimental idea that Oz was extended as a planned Utopia” (91), and by observing who eats what—or whom— in Oz, readers see the ways in which Baum subverts his utopia through food’s paradoxical role in society. Cooking and eating together should build community, yet such fundamental and quotidian processes simultaneously highlight cultural tensions in that the social order must be readdressed at almost every meal. Through the perpetual threat of cannibalism in Oz, one never knows if one will be the diner or the dined.

Food and cooking are central to the creation and maintenance of a social structure, and in the Oz novels they define the parameters of civilization and civilized behavior within the fairy kingdom. Claude Lévi-Strauss outlines the pivotal role of food and cooking in cultivating a society:

[T]he art of cooking is not entirely situated on the side of culture. Since it corresponds to the demands of the body, and is determined in each of its modes by the particular way in which, in various contexts, man fits into the world, cooking, being situated between nature and culture, has as its function to ensure their articulation one with the other. It belongs to both domains, and reflects this duality in each of its manifestations.⁴

(489)

In theory, the raw ingredients of food belong to the realm of nature, whereas the cooking process adheres to the realm of civilization. In practice, however, these borders frequently dissolve due to the close intermingling of the steps necessary to consume food, including hunting, gathering, storing, and preparing the various ingredients of a meal. Cooking cannot be discretely taxonomized under rubrics of either nature or culture because it is central to their complex interrelationship, as it is also key to the propagation of any civilized culture.

In many ways, food serves a civilizing function in Oz. The texts suggest that, if creatures have access to a sufficient food supply, they will evolve to a higher level of sophistication, intelligence, and social involvement. Aunt Em brings her American prejudice against mosquitoes to Oz, but the Tin Woodman ensures her that such fears are now misguided:

“We have some very large mosquitoes here, which sing as beautifully as song birds,” replied the Tin Woodman. “But they never bite or annoy our people, because they are well fed and taken care of. The reason they bite people in your country is because they are hungry—poor things!”

“Yes,” agreed Aunt Em; “they’re hungry, all right. An’ they ain’t very particular who they feed on. I’m glad you’ve got the ’skeeters educated in Oz.”

(ECO 305)

In this ideal example of the role that food plays in...