During the 19th and 20th centuries, America became a massive superpower of cultural abundance and productivity. As William Leach states in his work The Land of Desire and the Culture of Consumer Capitalism, “the cardinal characteristics of this culture were acquisition and consumption as means to happiness; the cult of the new; the democratization of desire; and monetary value as the predominant measure of all value in society” (Leach page 3). As consumption increased, Americans would begin to spend their few free hours entering dream worlds of fantasy and enchantment to suppress the bland, monotonous boundaries and shackles of the new modern society. A work of unimaginable attraction that catapulted Americans into the realm of imagination and wonder was L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz appears to be a magnificent tale about finding one's identity and purpose in a world of ideological liberation and self-expression. However, if you unravel the ever-present layer of ornate fantasy in the story, the mechanisms of capitalism reveal themselves. After you...