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3. The Birth of a Witch
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Wicked, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
The Nature of Evil
Power and Oppression
Identity and Otherness
Destiny vs. Free Will
Guilt, Blame, and Forgiveness
Summary
Analysis
Days later, Melena writes to her childhood home, Colwen Grounds, asking for Nanny—the woman who helped raise her—to come at once. Frex warns Nanny that their baby, Elphaba, is “damaged,” but Nanny brushes it off, confident she can handle anything. When she meets Elphaba, she’s startled by the baby’s sharp teeth and restlessness. Still, Nanny is determined to give her the care and affection her parents seem unwilling to provide. Since Elphaba’s birth, Frex has withdrawn from his neighbors, and Melena has started regularly chewing pinlobble leaves, a sedative, to numb herself.
Nanny’s arrival emphasizes how quickly Elphaba’s parents retreat from her. While Frex isolates and Melena medicates herself into oblivion, Nanny intends to simply love Elphaba. This contrast makes clear that Elphaba’s earliest stability comes not from her own parents but from an outsider, and one who refuses to see her as cursed or “damaged.”
Themes
Frex confesses to Nanny that he believes Elphaba’s appearance is punishment for his failure to save Rush Springs from sin. But Nanny pulls Melena aside and asks if she had been unfaithful—maybe that’s the real reason Elphaba is green. Melena denies consciously having an affair, but she admits that while Frex was away preaching, she often chewed pinlobble leaves out of boredom. During that time, travelers sometimes passed through, and she suggests she may have been taken advantage of. Nanny furiously calls this what it is: rape. After a few weeks, when Nanny proposes trying magic to help Elphaba, Frex is outraged. Nanny leaves soon after, still unsure of Elphaba’s origins, but certain the child has a rebellious spirit.
Though Frex blames himself for Elphaba’s appearance—a rather self-centered way of understanding his daughter’s abnormalities—the uncertainty of her true paternity suggests that her origins are more complex than divine punishment alone. Melena’s hazy confession hints at a significant memory that remains inaccessible—but Nanny clarifies part of the picture by establishing that Melena was raped, and she implies that Elphaba’s possible biological father is a dangerous man.
Themes
