Why does water melt the Witch of the West?
I always took it as a metaphor for holy water. According to straightdope: The book provides a few hints: (1) When Dorothy first arrives in Oz, her house falls on and kills the Wicked Witch of the East. After Dorothy has some conversation with the Munchkins and the good Witch of the North, they noticed that “the feet of the dead Witch had disappeared entirely and nothing was left but the silver shoes.” The Witch of the North explains that “She was so old that she dried up quickly in the sun.” We note the reference to being “dried up.” (As an aside, the silver shoes in the book became ruby slippers in the movie. Margaret Hamilton, who played both Wicked Witches, was a fan of the Baum books and asked the producer Mervyn Le Roy why the shoes had been changed to red. She reported that Le Roy said that in Technicolor red stood out better against the Yellow Brick Road than did silver.
I always took it as a metaphor for holy water. According to straightdope: The book provides a few hints: (1) When Dorothy first arrives in Oz, her house falls on and kills the Wicked Witch of the East. After Dorothy has some conversation with the Munchkins and the good Witch of the North, they noticed that “the feet of the dead Witch had disappeared entirely and nothing was left but the silver shoes.” The Witch of the North explains that “She was so old that she dried up quickly in the sun.” We note the reference to being “dried up.” (As an aside, the silver shoes in the book became ruby slippers in the movie. Margaret Hamilton, who played both Wicked Witches, was a fan of the Baum books and asked the producer Mervyn Le Roy why the shoes had been changed to red. She reported that Le Roy said that in Technicolor red stood out better against the Yellow Brick Road than did silver.) (2) When the Wicked Witch of the West has captured Dorothy and her friends, she enslaves Dorothy for a time,
