Hidden Meaning

     A couple of posts ago, I created an analogy between a common household task (cleaning out the refrigerator) and the writing process. Ever since, of course, I keep finding other equally comparable occupations everywhere I turn. Either I'm incredibly insightful, or spend entirely too much time working around the house.
     It occurred to me in the process, however, that perhaps many, if not all writers incorporate such analogies in their work; in other words, they create plots and characters designed, perhaps unintentionally even, as analogies to the writing process. Having been an English teacher for over 30 years, it was relatively easy for me to come up with some prime examples once I got the idea in my head. (I think I was folding laundry at the time...or was it weeding the garden?)
     If you go as far back as Sophocles, for example, and his play "Oedipus Rex," you've got this guy who is given this terrible prophecy, so he runs away from his kingdom to try and avoid his fate; i.e., killing his father and marrying his mother (as my teenage students would say, "ewwwww"). I should mention here, as a heads up to other teachers, that this is an excellent choice of literature to include in your high school curriculum, as you can be sure the kids will read the whole thing. Anyway, spoiler alert, Oedipus ends up accidentally fulfilling this tragic prophecy. As writers, we learn from this that no matter how hard you try to avoid it (by say, majoring in business), if you are destined to be writer, you will never be able to escape your financially insecure fate.
      Then there is Henry David Thoreau. His entire literary reputation (as well as his appeal to 1960s era hippies) is based on two things: living on Walden Pond by himself and divining words of wisdom from his natural surroundings, and creating the concept of civil disobedience by refusing to pay the poll tax in protest of the Mexican American War (and other government expenditures). Never mind that he regularly went home for dinner with his mother (who we must also assume did his laundry while he ate) when he dwelled in the wilds of Walden Pond, but also that the land on which he lived belonged to Emerson, so Thoreau probably wasn't paying any taxes in the first place.
      From Thoreau's work, I'm thinking that we writers are meant to understand, sadly, that it is the image an author projects rather than the actual truth of what he writes that is paramount to literary success. This could also account for the fact that Ernest Hemingway, a self-proclaimed and politically-incorrect male chauvinist (and well-known heavy drinker) managed to win a Pulitzer prize.
     He achieved this literary honor, by the way, for writing The Old Man and The Sea, every teenager's favorite summer reading book because it is so short. Here, however, the analogy to the writing process is also noticeably strong. This old guy goes fishing, even though no one really thinks he's any good at it. Determined to prove them wrong, he spends many long and tedious days at sea, eventually hooking a huge fish that he is extremely proud of. After hours of grappling with the creature, he hauls it in and straps it to his boat in order to bring it home so all his friends will see and admire it. However...sorry, spoiler alert again...sharks eat the fish on his way back to the dock, and no one is really interested in his great achievement. I doubt this analogy needs much explanation, especially if you write.
    Nonetheless, I have to admit that there are a few, possibly more optimistic literary analogies to the writing process. The Poet Robert Frost, for example, wrote about the joys of "The Road Not Taken" as well as the fact that "one could do worse than be a swinger of birches" (aka, a dreamer).
     But one of my favorites is embodied in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which yes, was actually a novel written in 1900 by a guy named Frank Baum, long before Judy Garland donned the ruby slippers and skipped into a "technicolor world" with her dog and some other dubious companions. (Baum is also best known, by the way, for penning the favorite expression of all teachers working with teenagers: "I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto.")
    Anyhow, in this novel Dorothy and her odd collection of friends (and by the way, doesn't she ever wonder why a scarecrow and a tin man can walk and talk or why a lion doesn't simply eat them all and be done with it?) travel down a proscribed path (i.e., a yellow brick road) under the assumption it will solve all their problems and make them successful in their quest. They are, of course, thwarted along the way by such things as flying monkeys (the source of innumerable childhood nightmares after the movie came out) and a wicked witch determined to belittle them and undermine their optimistic efforts. (See where I'm going here?)
     In the end, however, Dorothy and her companions surmount all these challenges and reach the Emerald City (okay, another spoiler, but who doesn't know this story?) only to find out that the "Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz" is a middle-aged man speaking through a microphone. The good news is, that even though the guy is a fraud, his wise words are easily applicable to the writing process; i.e., no matter how many times your work is rejected or criticized (aka thwarted) by contest judges, publishing companies, literary agents, relatives, or former best friends, your literary achievements are still valid, and also, no matter what "experts" say you need to do differently, you really have everything you need to succeed right inside you all the time.
    My only concern about this powerful and positive analogy is this: why hasn't anyone ever heard of Frank Baum?