Created by L. Frank Baum Type Magical desert | Genre Children's books Creator L. Frank Baum | |
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Other name(s) Shifting Sands, Great Sandy Waste, Impassable Desert | ||
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The Deadly Desert is the magical desert that completely surrounds the fictional Land of Oz.
Contents
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Geology
On maps, the eastern quadrant of the desert is called the Deadly Desert, while the other three quadrants of desert are called the Shifting Sands, the Impassable Desert, and the Great Sandy Waste.
The desert was originally described as dangerous as any natural desert but no more. Indeed, in The Marvelous Land of Oz, Mombi tries to escape through it in the form of a griffin and Glinda chases her over the sands. In Ozma of Oz, it has become a magical desert with life-destroying sands and noxious fumes, a feature that remained constant through the rest of the series.
Anyone who sets foot into the sand of any of these deserts turns into sand themselves. The desert is used as a literary device to explain why Oz is essentially cut off from the rest of the world and the rest of Nonestica. However, it has been crossed several times by people from within Oz and from the outside world, with applied ingenuity, with magical assistance, or through unusual natural phenomena.