Is Henry Gale (Ben) the Wizard of Aus?
A comment left by one of our readers (Allie) really got my attention because growing up The Wizard of Oz was one of my favorite movies. There is tons of symbolism used throughout Lost, and one that I’ve missed completely is the references to this movie. Check these out:
1. Henry Gale is the name of Dorthy’s uncle who turned out to be the dishonest Wizard who crashed in the Land of Oz in a hot air baloon. Ben uses this story when he is first caught by the Losties.
2. Zeke was the name of one of the men working on the farm in Kansas. He turned out to be the Cowardly Lion in Oz.
3. This one is kind of a stretch but, the map that Locke saw was compared on another site to a map of Oz. You can see the 2 maps here and here.
4. In the first episode of season 3 there were two legs/feet sticking out from under the house.
5. In Flashes before your eyes, desmond sees a scaffolding fall and kill a man wearing red shoes that were sticking out from under the crash.
6. One of the episode names was called “The man behind the curtain”.
7. When the blast door came down on Locke’s leg, Ben came back in and Locke said “You came back”. Ben replys “Well of course I did. What did you think, I was going to leave you here”. In the movie, Dorthy is locked in the witches tower and the tin man and scare crow come into save her. Dorthy says “You came back.” And the Tin Man says “Well of course we would Dorothy, what did you think, we were going to leave you here?”.
8. James Goodwin was the name of one of the others. This is the name of the wizard in the Russian translation of The Wizard of Oz by Alexander Volkov.
9. Juliet’s episode was called Not in Portland…sounds kinda similar to Dorthy saying We’re not in Kansas anymore.
10. Juliet also asks Ben multiple times if she can go home and talks only about how she wants to go home. This is the whole story of the movie with Dorthy trying to get back home to Kansas.
11. The others list that Michael must bring to them in order to save Walt included 4 people - Kate, Hurley, Jack, and Sawyer (Dorthy, Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, and Scarecrow)
12. In the novel “The Number of the Beast” by Robert Heinlein, Glinda the Good Witch reminds two pregnant women that nobody gives birth in Oz.
The writers have said that Lost is not a dream, nor is it purgatory. In the movie, the Land of Oz was all a dream, but in the actual book, the story was all really happening. Has anyone else noticed these references to the Wizard of Oz, and have you noticed any others?
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6 Responses to “Is Henry Gale (Ben) the Wizard of Aus?”
You forgot the dog!!
The first time Thought about it was when locke made the comment to ben but now that I think about, this makes alot of sense.
Ben is crazy and thinks hes the characters out of wizard of oz
ignor the last comment i have to say good theory but i think the writers put stuff like this in just to put theory makers off or it could turn out to be a more modern Oz
ignor the last comment i have to say good theory/points but i think the writers put stuff like this in just to put theory makers off or it could turn out to be a more modern Oz
Ozma Of Oz begins with Dorothy getting blown overboard, en route to Australia! I haven’t read the books but I’m reading little summaries of a couple now. I don’t wanna go too in depth tho coz this is a well exciting clue thing n I wanna actually read the books. There’s a parallel between the Other’s response to their arrival and The Nome King’s response to Dorothy and Billina’s.