original book, the Tin Man explains that he had once been human, but the Wicked Witch
of the East had put a curse on his axe. With each swing of his axe he had chopped off a
part of his body. The only person who could help him was the tinsmith, who replaced the
severed parts of his body with artificial limbs made out of tin. Eventually his entire body
was made of tin. The fate of the Tin Man suggests the dehumanization of industrialized
labor. When Dorothy and the Scarecrow find the Tin Man he has rusted to the point
where he is immobile. According to Littlefield, this is a reference to the depression of the
1890s that had closed many factories and left large numbers of workers unemployed.
Most of the analysts who see The Wizard of Oz as a political allegory agree that the Tin
Man represents industrial workers.
According to Gretchen Ritter the Tin Man is the “hardened worker” (2).
1. Henry Littlefield, “The Wizard of Oz: Parable on Populism, American Quarterly 16 (Spring, 1964), p.52.
2. Gretchen Ritter, Goldbugs and Greenbacks: The Anti-Monopoly Tradition and the Politics of Finance in America
(NY Cambridge University Press, 1997) 9.
