“Perhaps he just didn’t have the feeling for faith. It seemed to be a kind of language, one whose gnarled syntax needed to be heard from birth, or it remained forever unintelligible.”

As this passage shows, Liir struggles to truly understand religion and faith. Having grown up with the spiritually noncommittal Elphaba, he has never cultivated his faith in any religious tenets. This description creates a cynical, wary attitude toward the very concept of faith, implying that the world’s true believers have been indoctrinated from birth to embrace a system that remains “unintelligible” to anyone else. Liir has never learned the “language” of faith and cannot fully understand it now. In short, the rationality and realism that Elphaba is now at odds with the faith he sees across Oz.

“The girl’s directness was puzzling, and Liir wasn’t used to it. The Witch had never hidden her emotions, but nor had she explained them, and in many ways living with her had been like sharing an apartment with an ill-tempered house pet.”

These contemplations reveal the complexity of Liir’s relationship with Elphaba. Even now, he is unsure if she truly is his mother, for she never acted like he was her son. By comparing Elphaba to “an ill-tempered house pet,” Maguire simultaneously belittles her and explains the reasons for Liir’s ambiguous feelings towards her. In Liir’s mind, living with Elphaba was difficult because he felt an attachment to her that she never overtly reciprocated.

“Right up to the end, the Witch had kept trying to teach the winged monkeys to speak, as if to be able to testify might save their lives someday. So much bound up in language…The language of spells themselves—spells, of all things! A way to order sounds to make things shift, reveal what is hidden, conceal what isn’t…”

Liir places an emphasis on words in this passage, remembering the ways in which Elphaba’s magic depended on language. By cultivating literacy and speech in her flying monkeys, she demonstrated her respect for Oz’s Animals and sought to help them advocate for themselves. In different ways, Liir also experiences the importance of language as he grows and explores Oz and comes to realize the corrupt power involved in the government’s use of propaganda to influence the course of Ozian history.

“They skirted the edge of the Thousand Year Grasslands, ants in single file on the fringe of a carpet of prairie.”

Maguire often uses figurative language to bring the land of Oz to life. In this excerpt, he employs a metaphor to describe the journey of Liir and Dorothy’s group along the Thousand Year Grasslands. The grasslands are far-reaching and flat, creating an unending landscape that makes the characters feel insignificant. To capture this sentiment, Maguire compares them to ants walking alongside a carpet, forging an association between the vastness of nature and the characters’ relative unimportance in this scenario.

“As she descended the stairs, she heard the first few notes of an exquisite instrument being played by an expert. So suddenly it took her back to school days—when she was a nervous slip of a thing at Madame Teastane’s Female Academy, not the cow she’d become—that she had to steady herself against the wall.”

Candle’s ability to play the domingon borders on magical. When she adds a Pfenix feather, restoring the instrument to its fullest capabilities, the notes she plays influence the minds of those who hear them. In this instance, her music transports a maunt into her past, confusing her. Candle’s ability to bring the past to the present serves as a narrative device to reveal the details of the unconscious Liir’s past.

“Restored to glory by the feather of the Pfenix, the domingon had become responsive: the harmonic overtones hung in the air and complemented one another. When the invalid seemed too agitated, she would bring him back with long furling phrases.”

Candle’s use of the domingon to heal Liir illustrates the living magic that permeates Oz. Because the domingon allows her to control and influence Liir, she can play with his emotions, forcing him to calm down. Her music becomes a powerful force that brings Liir back to life and later eases Princess Nastoya into death.

“‘Scarcely see a soul coming from your direction who doesn’t have designs on my immortal soul,’ said the Water Buffalo. ‘It used to be I was worried about my hide. I always thought a soul was private, but it appears it can be colonized against your will if you don’t watch out.’”

In Oz, Animals are often abused by the leaders of the nation. In Wicked, the Wizard sought to ban them from society, removing them from office and forbidding them from working any job other than manual labor. Now, with the Emperor Apostle on the throne, Animals face a similar crisis in that they are targeted for religious conversion. As the Water Buffalo explains here, he is wary of those who seek to convert him, and the idea that a soul can be “colonized” against one’s will also emphasizes the oppressive nature of the current political system in Oz.

“It was like being approached by a decorated holiday tree tiptoeing in jeweled slippers. Lady Glinda was the most exceedingly dressed person Liir had ever seen.”

Glinda is another character who plays a prominent role in Wicked, serving as a friend to Elphaba despite her honored position in the Wizard’s society. In L. Frank Baum’s original work, Glinda is portrayed as a glamorous witch who acts as a foil to the Wicked Witch of the West. Although Maguire’s portrayal of his own “Wicked Witch” is far more sympathetic, his Glinda is also a foil to Elphaba, for she becomes a symbol of high society. She is bejeweled and elegant, but it is also important to note that in some ways, this fashion acts as a disguise, making her seem loyal to the Emerald City even though she secretly supports Liir and the maunts of the House of Saint Glinda.

“There’s not much left for us in our home marshes, but you’d be ruined in the north. They’d spit at you, your easy ways; they’d laugh, your little voice. Stay here, and remember me wherever I am.”

Quadling Country, in the south of Oz, is the site of both the Wizard and the Emperor Apostle’s fascistic campaigns. While the Wizard destroyed the land to find rubies, the Emperor Apostle now uses the Quadlings as a scapegoat to justify his attacks and misuse of military power. Candle’s uncle recognizes this dynamic and warns Candle of the hate they may face in the rest of Oz. Illustrating The Damaging Effects of Corruption, the Emperor Apostle crafts a false identity for the Quadlings that pits the rest of Oz against them.

“After Glinda had gone, Commander Cherrystone took no more notice of Liir than he might a napping dog.”

Liir continuously searches for a place to belong, even though he rarely finds anyone who will pay him much attention. When he prepares to descend into Southstairs, he notices that Commander Cherrystone, whom he met in Wicked, essentially forgets about him in Glinda’s absence. By comparing Liir to a napping dog, the author suggests that Liir is less than a full-fledged human entity in the eyes of the callous Cherrystone and similarly powerful people.

“A glowing organ, like the illuminated heart of Oz itself pushed through the flesh of the land, pulsing with its own life, tricked out with monuments, defaced with the graffiti of broken trees, the Palace of the Wizard a cancer upon the landscape, the dead center of it all.”

When Liir flies out of Southstairs, he sees the Emerald City from the air and is astounded by its appearance. He sees the city as an organ, acting as the heart of Oz. However, when he notices the Palace of the Wizard at the center of the city, he recognizes it as a “cancer” upon the city and upon Oz as a whole. This metaphor captures the legacy of the Wizard and his brutal rule, making it clear that despite his departure, the palace still symbolizes oppression.

“Some felt the Home Guard existed to provide mortal comfort to the citizens of the Emerald City. Should the rabble ever rise up, should the denizens of Southstairs break free—hell, should a mighty comet thud into the Palace and burn it to blazes—the Home Guard would be right there, ready to restore order.”

When Liir joins the Home Guard, he believes that the fighting force is meant to protect the citizens of Oz. However, as his career in this military force develops, he learns that the stated goals of this military entity are themselves mere propaganda. When he is later tasked with destroying the town on the bridge, his actions create chaos and actively harm the citizens of Oz, forcing him into a state of shocked disillusionment as he realizes the extremes to which his “follower” mentality has taken him.

“That those who headed the nation could enjoy their meals in such luxury!—the men marched with firmer step. The vitality of the capital gave life to their cause.”

As Liir and the Home Guard march out of the Emerald City, he realizes that the imagery of the city and the Home Guard are meant to preserve the Emperor Apostle’s rule, creating the impression that because the capital is lavished in luxury, the Emperor’s regime must be favored. This moment marks the beginning of Liir’s introduction to the ways in which propaganda is used as a tool to control the populace.

“Over the years, with the harvesting of trees, the soil eroded, though. The hills lost height and subsided into the muck. Little by little the Bengdani villagers either left or took to the bridge. Now the hamlet of Bengda supported itself by exacting a toll from the ferries and commercial fishing vessels that used Waterslip as a highway between Qhoyre and points south.”

When Liir arrives in Quadling Country, he sees how the Quadlings adapt to the occupying forces sent by the Emerald City. As the Wizard, and now the Emperor Apostle, stole their resources and oppressed them, the Quadlings adapted, finding a way to survive by taking to the bridge and creating a toll. However, their very ability to adapt dooms them in the eyes of the Emperor Apostle. To eliminate their toll and further weaken the Quadlings, he directs the Home Guard in Quadling Country to attack, and Liir’s participation in this atrocity finally forces him to see The Damaging Effects of Corruption firsthand.

“[H]e remembered the revery and saw something in it he hadn’t noticed at the time. He had recognized the book that the old fellow was hauling about with him. It was the Grimmerie, the book that the Witch—that Elphaba—had used as her book of spells.”

The Grimmerie, a book of spells from another world, is a central motif of Wicked. It is a book that the Wizard covets because he hopes to exert more control over Oz, though Elphaba, who can read it, keeps it at Kiamo Ko. Through the Grimmerie, Elphaba learns magic. When Liir sees a strange man carrying it, he is reminded of Elphaba’s magic, which she used to resist to the Wizard. The magic tome therefore symbolizes the idea that magic can be used either to oppress others or to resist oppression.

“But gaining in speed; and gaining on him, slicing toward him in a wide curvet like hounds let loose on the side of a meadow, and he the fox already moving broadly down its middle.”

When the dragons hunt and attack Liir, Maguire invokes the deadly imagery of a fox hunt, casting Liir as the fox and the dragons as the pursuing hounds. Traumatized by this crisis, Liir finds himself surrounded, unsure of where to go, and the desperate nature of his plight conveys the true extent of the power imbalance he now faces.

“He wanted her to be the Quadling girl tossed from the bridge at Bengda, grown up and magically restored not just to life but into his life. How he wanted to provide for her—to begin the impossible task of reparation.”

Liir is filled with guilt over his immoral actions in Quadling Country, and he now tries to find absolution in Candle. Despite the impossibility of the scenario he envisions, Liir hopes that Candle might be the girl he saw thrown off the bridge to escape the fire. In his mind, if Candle truly is this girl, he can help her and make up for his misdeeds. The impossibility of his fantasy emphasizes how deeply he has been marked by his participation in that atrocity, and once again he looks for an external remedy for his inner turmoil.

“I think it’s oppositional. You just don’t see it at first—you read some ways down and begin to find resistance to the notions of the Apostle. It’s a clever rhetorical device, in its way; it may have fooled some readers, or convinced others to join a resistance to—this Apostle, whoever he is. It’s seditious, this paper, that’s what it is. And whoever didn’t like it traced its origins here, and made their sentiments known.”

While Liir and Candle reside at Apple Press Farm, they discover a broken printing press that once created subversive pamphlets that criticize the Emperor. The ruined state of the press also hints at the power that the Emperor Apostle and his forces are willing to exert in the goal of crushing all dissent. The details imply that they actively sought and found the source of the pamphlets and destroyed the press to prevent more from being distributed.

“Obelisks, cenotaphs, marble statues, fluttering banners and pennants. Souvenirs in kiosks: Everything OZ. I love OZ! A keychain, a whistle, a reticule, a letter opener, a lorgnette case: OZ, OZ. A military band every half mile, performing gratis for the residents of the emerald hive. The City seemed to have its own theme song.”

When Liir returns to the Emerald City, he feels as though he has entered a different world. While outside of the city, Liir witnesses widespread destruction and oppression, but within its walls lies a happy, proud population oblivious to the issues that like beyond the city’s borders. The monuments and the commercialization of Oz’s supposed “greatness” act as propaganda, convincing the city’s inhabitants that they are justified in embracing their luxuries and privileges.

“‘Are you spying for one of our enemies?’ ‘I don’t even know who our enemies are,’ said Liir. ‘I never have.’”

Gregory Maguire is has openly stated that the United States’ wars in the Middle East during the 2000s served as inspiration for Son of a Witch. In this light, the Emperor Apostle’s propaganda and use of powerful dragons are meant to reflect the US government’s habit of invading different countries with the dubious claim that such things must be done to protect the nation. Additionally, this excerpt of a conversation between Trism and Liir, in which Liir admits that he never knows who Oz’s “enemies” are, further suggests that the Ozian government manufactures enemies in order to justify its warlike actions.

“Some superiors were becoming dangerously out of touch with the needs of the common folk, and fell to asking bothersome questions about the spiritual authority of the Emperor. Such foment could only erode the confidence of the nation.”

The Emperor Apostle uses faith and religion to consolidate power and create a sense of nationalism in the Emerald City and beyond. However, the maunteries represent one of the primary sources of resistance that he faces—a dangerous one, as they directly refuse to recognize his authority. The scrapings of young maunts serves as a warning to these independent-minded maunteries, and the Emperor justifying his use of violence by claiming that he is eliminating dissent and division and protecting the growing nationalism across Oz.

“The time of the dragons is done, at least for now. You can fly again. We can fly again. And before the next threat might come, we have to maneuver ourselves into…a coalition. No not that: a nation.”

In Part 3, Liir comes to understand the importance of unity in the face of oppression. When he returns to the Conference of Birds, he encourages the Birds to unite and fight back. He suggests that they become a nation, a more united concept than a mere coalition. This suggestion hints at the need of diverse oppressed groups within Oz to unite and oppose the corrupt nation that the Emperor Apostle is building.

“They flew in formation for viewing from the east. They were the Witch, hat and cape, skirt and broom, shadowy face tucked down against the wind, but beady-eyed bright. Liir, on his broom, followed General Kynot, whose superior navigational system gave him his location. Liir on his broom played the keen black eye of the Witch.”

Throughout Son of a Witch, Elphaba is portrayed as a symbol of resistance against oppressive government. In Wicked, she struggled against the Wizard and his oppression of Animals, and now others coopt her image to lead a new resistance. To demonstrate their opposition to the Emperor Apostle, Liir and the birds take the shape of Elphaba and show the city that there are forces outside of its walls who will push back against the power of Shell Thropp.