<P> Apart from intentional symbolism, scholars have speculated on the sources of Baum's ideas and imagery . The "man behind the curtain" could be a reference to automated store window displays of the sort famous at Christmas season in big city department stores; many people watching the fancy clockwork motions of animals and mannequins thought there must be an operator behind the curtain pulling the levers to make them move (Baum was the editor of the trade magazine read by window dressers). </P> <P> Additional allegories have been developed, without claims that they were originally intended by Baum . The text has been treated as a theosophical allegory . In 1993, W. Geoffrey Seeley recast the story as an exercise in treachery, suggesting the supposed "Good Witch Glinda" used an innocent, ignorant patsy (Dorothy) to overthrow both her own sister witch (Witch of the West) and the Wizard of Oz, leaving herself as undisputed master of all four corners of Oz: North, East, West and South (and presumably the Emerald City). She even showed her truest "Machiavellian brilliance" by allowing the story to be entitled after the weakest of her three opponents . Glinda could have told Dorothy that the "silver slippers would easily do the job (of returning Dorothy to her beloved home) but decided that a destabilizing force such as Dorothy might be just the thing to shake up her other rival (The Wizard of Oz)." Kassinger, in her book Gold: From Greek Myth to Computer Chips, purports that "The Wizard symbolizes bankers who support the gold standard and oppose adding silver to it...Only Dorothy's silver slippers can take her home to Kansas," meaning that by Dorothy not realizing that she had the silver slippers the whole time, Dorothy, or "the westerners", never realized they already had a viable currency of the people . </P>

Wizard of oz what do the characters represent