Tin Woodsman
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The Tin Woodsman (also known as The Tin Woodman or simply The Tin Man) is a character in the fictional Land of Oz created by American author L. Frank Baum. In his classic 1900 book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (as well as in other Oz books), The Tin Woodsman is portrayed as a living creature made out of various tin pieces.
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The classic books
In the books, the origins of the character are rather gruesome. Originally an ordinary man by the name of Nick Chopper, The Tin Woodsman used to make his living chopping down trees in the forests of Oz. The Wicked Witch of the East enchanted his axe to prevent him from marrying the girl that he loved. The enchanted axe chopped off his limbs, one by one. Each time he lost a limb, Nick Chopper replaced it with a prosthetic limb made of tin. Finally, nothing was left of him but tin. However, the tinsmith who helped him neglected to give him a heart. Once Nick Chopper was made entirely of tin, he was no longer able to love the girl he had fallen for.
In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy Gale befriends the Tin Woodsman and he follows her to the Emerald City to get a heart from The Wizard of Oz. They are joined on their adventure by The Scarecrow and The Cowardly Lion. The Wizard sends Dorothy and her friends to the Winkie Country to kill the Wicked Witch of the West.
The Wizard turns out to be a "humbug", and can only provide a placebo heart made of velvet. However, this is enough to please The Tin Woodsman who, with or without a heart, was all along the most tender and emotional of Dorothy's companions (just as The Scarecrow was the wisest and The Cowardly Lion the bravest). When Dorothy returns home to her farm in Kansas, The Tin Woodsman returns to the Winkie Country to rule as emperor. In later books, he even constructs, for himself, a palace made entirely of tin; from the architecture all the way down to the flowers in the garden.
In The Tin Woodman of Oz, Nick Chopper finally sets out to find his lost love, Nimmee Ammee, but she has already married a man constructed partly out of his own discarded limbs.
A recurring problem for The Tin Woodsman in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was his tendency to rust when exposed to the least bit of moisture. For this reason, the character eventually has himself nickel plated and the Winkies are very proud to be ruled by the only nickel plated emperor in history.
The 1939 movie
In the classic 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz, The Tin Man was played by actor Jack Haley. Buddy Ebsen was originally cast to play the role, but the character's makeup originally contained aluminum powder. Ebsen accidentally breathed the powder into his lungs and was rushed to a hospital. This forced him to give up the role.
Modern works
The Tin Woodsman is also a minor character in author Gregory Maguire's revisionist novel Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West and its Broadway musical adaptation Wicked. Gonzo, a Muppet character, was cast to play a similar role, the Tin Thing, in the all-new The Muppets' Wizard of Oz.
Trivia
- In Alexander Volkov's Russian translation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, The Tin Woodsman is dubbed the Iron Woodchopper. Volkov, unlike Baum, was aware that tin does not rust.
- The "tinman" gene in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is so called because, when it is absent, the flies do not develop a heart. (cf. Azpiazu & Frasch (1993) Genes and Development: 7: 1325-1340.)
| The world of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz Wicked (The books | The musical)
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