the similarities between the words "wicked" and "Hitler," calling it "no accident" that he chose this title for his book. He recalled reading a newspaper headline in 1991 comparing Saddam Hussein to Adolf Hitler and feeling firsthand the emotional power of propaganda. Maguire "set out to examine the language and propaganda used to marshal brute force against individuals or minorities that might have been opposed to the war." In the book, one major plank of the Wizard's agenda involves the subjugation of sentient Animals and Madame Morrible promotes this idea using a type of moralistic poem called a "quell." Elphaba instantly sees the propaganda for what it is. Tor noted that terrorism, committed both by and against the state, plays a major role in the second half of the book. The Wizard keeps an SS-like secret police, the Gale Force, which uses violence to carry out his totalitarian agenda. Elphaba similarly uses terrorism to combat them, though she shies away from targeting children. Life purpose A lifelong Catholic, Maguire remembered the nuns who taught in the Catholic schools of his boyhood home of Albany, New York. He admired their sense of purpose and dedication to their cause, saying that their integrity and inscrutability made them witches in his mind. Elphaba discovers her own purpose as a student at Shiz University, where the murder of her favorite professor, Dr. Dillamond, inspires her to join the cause of Animal rights. As the story progresses, she deepens her commitment to her cause, becoming a political exile for her beliefs. As revisionist literature Wicked is on its face a revisionist parallel novel for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The Independent compared it to Wide Sargasso Sea and Wild Wood as part of "a fascinating sub-genre of novels that revisit well-known stories as much in the spirit of criticism as homage." While previous authors had accepted the existing moral framework of the Oz stories, Wicked showed affection for the originals while simultaneously questioning everything they stood for. Maguire presents a sympathetic view of a villainous character by detailing her life story and helping the reader understand how "an innocent if rather green and biting child" can become "a still moralistic terrorist." He also transformed the Land of Oz itself, changing what he saw as an insular, parochial world into one where different groups and their political agendas intersect and overlap. Reception Wicked received mostly positive