My Elphaba/Water Theory

[Fae]

See i always figured that too. Elphaba had a soul, she just chose to deny it. It probably also had something to do with the fact that her father and her sister were so ovewhelmingly religious. he claimed to save the souls of people, Quadlings especially, but Elphaba saw them dying and decided that to have a soul was to condem yourself to fate.
By denying her soul, maybe she thought she would be able to escape fate?

[VivaTaquitos]

But wait...didn't blood burn her too?

[EclipstHeart]

maybe teh contact of water with skin cells is damaging, whereas other forms arent. she probably doesnt drink pure water out of fear that it would burn too much to bear. whereas diluted quantities would burn less (?). skin cells are, subtely, different from other cells in teh body, and it is a fact taht the body is composed of 70% H2O, am I right. so, she would definitely need water in SOME qualities and quantities to survive. oil would provide the necessary mosture to the skin cells, without causing unbearable burning. drinking diluted waters in minimal quantities may cause discomfort, but again, as it is necessary to her survival, must be tolerated. if it spills a little, well taht is unfortunate, but it won't kill her. likewise, the beads of sweat and tears, the blood, all these are not pure water and she is not necessarily drenched in them. again, discomfort, though not fatality.
being dowsed in a large amount of undiluted water, however, could be so harmful to the nature of her skin celss that she melts.
there are people with allergies to water, and they do survive somehow.
perhaps she is merely allergic to water in some novel and foreign way, and thus maximum exposure to potently pure water is fatal to her.
its just a guess.

[Popular Glinda]

Wow EclipstHeart, that was very enlightening lol. I was thinking while reading yours, that maybe since she never went near water all throughout her life, her skin had become used to not being in contact with the subtance and when it finally was, it would be like pouring liquid onto a low-quality paper towel or dropping an Alka-Seltzer into water -- it would dissolve...

Just a little bit to think about.

[EclipstHeart]

it is also important to note that we never really get inside her mind.
sure, once in a while, maguire speculate about what shes thinking.
and yes, he every now and then mentions her experiencing a burning sensation due to some exposure to moisture or something.
but these insights are exhibited in the novel more as observations about her, rather than a key into her.
the book is told from the perspectives of most of teh supporting chracters.
her mother (melena?)
boq
g(a)linda
fiyero
fiyero's wife (forgot he rname)
etc.
but so rarely, perhaps never, are we told in no uncertain terms exactly what she is experiencing/feeling/thinking. she, i'm sure, knows exactly how to live with her aversion to water.
but we never get far enough into her mind to know exactly what that way of living may be.
no cohesive method is ever offered to explain her madness.
this is because the method is locked away inside her.
we are told that she wipes away tears and whatnot, and that it burns her.
but we do not know how badly.
does it leave a mark?
for all the light the novel sheds on elphaba, we always SEE her, we do not KNOW her. she is still a mystery to us.
and so, we can debate this forever, but we will never REALYY know Why the Wicked Witch melts.

[VivaTaquitos]

EclipstHeart, you are very smart. I wish I had your brains.

[ElphieatShiz]

I agree. I never read that much into books and what you said is astonishing and I think it's got merit. Go, Eclipstheart!!!

[EclipstHeart]

well, thank you so much.
i honestly feel flattered, something taht doesnt usually happen.
my school, Regis High School (attn FellowOzian) is filled with plenty of people brighter than me, quciker than I am, and certainly WAY more athletic than I will ever be.
theyre the type who receive tons of awards and whatnot (again, attn FO)
i, however, am one of those sad cases where the grades are nothing special and you can barely catch, so the prinicpal reminds you that simply getting into the school is an ahievement.
yeah, if it's such an achievement, how on Earth did Mike Osbourne get in?!
(here's hoping he doesnt post on here.... god I hate anonymity. o well, he's a crass jock as dumb as an ox, i bet he doesnt even know what music is, let alone attend anything featuring it.u know, he's still under the impression that rap is music. it honestly isn. it's petry. not music, poetry. there IS a difference.
it is poetrywith musical accompaniment, ut that does not make i music
actually, osbourne, i hope ur eadng this. maybe u'll learn somehing about the better things in life, things that exemplify green skin versus pig skin.
that is, assuming u learned to read this summer.
;D
tehehe. ;D )
well, i just wanted to say thank you for making me feel special! u guys are really good at the flattery thing.
may the unamed god bless u all
and may lurline always... ummmmm... be good to you (?)!
anyway, i just wanted to add that i recently made some offhanded comment yesterday about my friend brendan,. i was sitting behind him, and he has the tendency to be kind of a "witch" (tho more usually something else that rhymes with it)
(i luv u brendan if ur reading this.
don't kill me )
and he said i paid too much for my water bottle (it had elctrolytes in it!!!) and so i opened it and squirted as much out down his shirt as i coudl before he turned.
it was glorious.
but then i made the comment i alluded to above:
walking in teh theater, a group of fellow juniors were sitting awaiting some meaningless assembly and i strode around pronouncing, "i just poured water on brendan. it was fun, liberating, and he started to melt. i suggest we all do it immediately!"
this of course drew the necessary laugh, cuz everyone wants to pour water on brendan, and with the way he usually threatens to drop house on people or burn down their homes, he bears a resemblance to Elphaba via Margaret Hamilton, at least in spirit, so the joke made perfect sense.
my point is, and please, don't take ths as any sort of scholarly criticism so much as an whimsical ponderment, i don't feel bad for elphaba, that she melted, taht is.
(god i love these boards. "creative grammar" as i call it, is perfectly acceptable) i think that the people of oz had simply had enough of her and poor little dorothey... the last and most intriguing adept of the wizard... was but the unwitting bearer of this grief. don't shootte messenger, remember! even tho, thru an entire novel, magure has made me come to love elpaba so much, as if she were actual emerald flesh and bone, still pity dorothey in the end. perhaps that is the most enduring aspect of baums basic tale. no matter how you spin it, the villain, be she evil or simply misunderstood, is till the villain, and in the end the wicked witch must always be dead.
otherwise we don't get to hear the munchkins sing. i love their voices. my friends and i try to mimic them at social gatherings (drama geeks that we are.... ahh...) god bless helium-filled balloons!
thanks again!

[greenatheart]

hi everyone (new here )

i just wanted to throw in my two cents on the topic of elphaba having a soul and also my own water theory.

like a few of you who have posted, i believe she did have a soul... she felt things like compassion, remorse, love, guilt, sadness, passion, regret... these are all feelings and concepts that connect us with each other... to me (in a very small nutshell), that's what having a soul means. also, if you consider the original Wizard of OZ story -- the scarecrow wishes for a brain, the tinman wishes for a heart, the lion wishes for courage... all of these are things that they already possessed but didn't know they had them. when elphaba (inadvertently) wishes for a soul, she may have believed that she didn't have one, but perhaps she made the wish because she subconsciously recognized her need to discover her soul and admit to herself that she'd had it all along...

one of the main themes of Wicked is the way that perception can affect our thoughts and opinions. because of her skin color and her aversion to water, elphaba was perceived as almost inhuman... someone posted a quote that said elphaba was seen as so evil that pure water would melt her... when in actuality, she's just as human as anyone else.. with both good and bad in her (one thing i remember is that toward the end of the book, there is a moment when elphaba realizes she has never told a lie in her life... not quite so evil or full of sin...) so... perhaps the green skin really was just a birth defect and the water aversion just an allergy...

while we may never know exactly why it kills the witch, i do think there is symbolism in the water. water represents life. it nourishes, keeps us alive, cleans us, it's what our blood, sweat and tears are made of... it's what connects us with everything that is living because we all need it... which goes back to my idea of what it means to have a soul... altho i'm not quite sure where that train of thought leads... my interpretation is still a work in progress because i just finished reading the book yestserday!

in any case, maybe it was purely irony that something that is essential to life is what kills her... ironic also that dorothy was actually trying to save her by throwing a bucket of water on her... but maybe the purpose of this is also to illustrate the blurred lines between right and wrong, good and evil... things aren't always black and white... sometimes they're green

[VivaTaquitos]

Gahh. People are so smart on this board. It sucks to be me.;D *cackle.*

[EclipstHeart]

greenatheart said:

things aren't always black and white... sometimes they're green

hehe, cute line greenatheart.
me likey!
and a really interesting point to boot!

[Fae]

Wow i've missed so much!
i love everyone's theorys and greenatheart' s line. Can i quote that and write it one things?

Just wanted to appluaud at the clever ones!

[Fiyercrow]

SquarePeg said:

It's a good theory, but it doesn't work for me because I don't believe Elphie actually didn't have a soul -- I believe she said that to try and convince herself, as an excuse to avoid connecting with people, because throughout her life such emotional connections only leave her with hurt and pain. So if you don't have a soul surely you can't love the way other people can, so you can't get hurt.

I agree with you Kat.
I like the first idea though, as it is a very informed and insightful hypothesis, but for me, it's not even a question of soul-less-ness... for me, it's about this idea of Elphaba's soul (or lack of) being saddled with sins.
Of WHAT sins is Elphaba guilty? Or more succinctly, I'll point out my view this way:
1. Either everyone has a soul, or no one does (whether any person believes it or not has no bearing on what the reality may be).
2. If the accumulation of sins results in this non-water-touching lifestyle, then SURELY Elphaba's mother, father, Nanny, Galinda, heck, everyone else in the book, should be as troubled by pure water as Elphaba herself.
3. Elphaba's "sins" are no worse than any other characters, and far less egregious than many (Morrible, the Wizard, the Gale Force, etc.). If anything, the nature of her soul (again, whether she believed in it or not) forced her to make choices which were innocent of malice and always well-meaning, UNLIKE the sins or crimes perpetrated by the real bad guys.
4. The whole thrust of the book, it has always seemed to me at any rate, is not so much about the actual nature of evil, but of OUR PERCEPTIONS of the nature of evil, which two very different things. As Elphaba says at the Margreave's house, "It is the nature of evil to remain secret". So none of us can know for certain wherein lies true Evil, and we end up blaming and pointing and cursing that which may be actually beneficial to us.

I guess this rambling post is trying to say that Elphaba is actually the sanest, fairest and most upright character in the whole book, even with all her flaws.
You'll notice that she's the only one who isn't a basketcase mentally, emotionally or spiritually. She's troubled, but she's trying to figure it out, unlike every other character, who are so befuddled by their own vanities, egos and sins that they can't see things for what they really are.
So I don't think there's any 'sin' in Elphaba to be a cause of her fear of water, whether she has a soul or not.
Maguire had to use the water idea to keep in line with the popular (pop-YOO-lar!) notion of the Witch's demise used by Baum and in the movie(s). He may not have had any sound, all-encompassing theory about WHY she was this way, he just knew how she met her end, and so he had to have it be that way.
But it IS a very deep question, or set of questions.
You guys are deep thinkers!!!!
Fiyercrow

[Emeraldgreengirl]

I like that theory! it makes alot of sence from the symbolic nature of the book.