Moral to Story
Is there a moral to this story?
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The original story was actual quite a change when compared to other children's literature at the time, as it had no moral, and even poked fun at those who tried to find morals in everything. There is a subtle moral about losing the innocence of childhood, but unfortunately that was sucked out in this version (along with the wordplay and political satire,) making it seem like a pointless, watered-down fairy tale that it is so often mistaken for.
Yeah, part of the point of this, as well as books it influenced like the Oz books, was to get away from the heavy moralizing. That's why a lot of the film versions have been so irritating, feeling the need to insert a moral (like the 1999 Hallmark one). At least Disney didn't do that. MGM completely missed the point in their classic Wizard of Oz film, too. It's been said that, while MGM made a great movie (one of my favorites), they took out everything that made the book so special and unique. The same applies, I think, to the various Alice films. I think this is a great movie, taken on it's own, but it's not Lewis Carroll's book.
What these books are about is Coming of Age. I suspect Walt was aware of this, because he later regretted not going ahead and doing the White Knight sequence from Through the Looking Glass, which sums up a lot of what's happening to Alice in the books. In that chapter, just before Alice crosses that last threshold to the Eighth Square where she'll become a Queen, the White Knight packs the serving dish she'd carried from the previous chapter into this large container. Inside that container are all sorts of objects that either appeared during the two books, or relate to things Alice experienced. There's the rattle the Tweedles were fighting over, an empty bottle of wine (representing the non-existent wine the March Hare offered), carrots for the White Rabbit, all sorts of things. The White Knight will keep all these things Alice must leave behind when she takes that final step and becomes a Queen.
The Loss of Innocence part of Coming of Age was even more direct in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with the melting of the Witch. MGM completely missed the point by changing that. In the book, Dorothy and her companions were being sent specifically to kill the Wicked Witch of the West, which they don't want to do, even if it's the only way they'll get what they desire most. Dorothy doesn't want to kill anybody, even someone who deserves it, even if it means never seeing her Aunt and Uncle, again. But, it reaches a point where things are inevitable. The only way Dorothy will find freedom, rescue her friends, free the enslaved Winkies, and end the threat to the people of Oz is by removing the Witch. She's figured out that the Witch is vulnerable to water, though she has no idea what water will actually do to the woman until, in a moment of anger, she dunks her with it...
Instantly the wicked woman gave a loud cry of fear, and then, as Dorothy looked at her in wonder, the Witch began to shrink and fall away.
"See what you have done!" she screamed. "In a minute I shall melt away."
"I'm very sorry, indeed," said Dorothy, who was truly frightened to see the Witch actually melting away like brown sugar before her very eyes.
"Didn't you know water would be the end of me?" asked the Witch, in a wailing, despairing voice.
"Of course not," answered Dorothy. "How should I?"
So, as you see, this was how Hollywood did things during the Golden Age, not just Disney. It seems writers, for generations, gave kids a lot more credit with what they could understand than the movie studios.
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