The Wicked Truth

In The Wicked Truth: When Good People Do Bad Things, now available at Amazon.com, author Suzanne Ross uses the lyrics and story of the Tony award winning musical, Wicked, to challenge the understanding of good and evil that forms the framework of our culture, and to offer solutions to the endless, escalating cycle of justified violence. By exposing the flawed and fatal logic of how to be good that drive the musicals plot, Ross reveals how being good can lead to scapegoating and violence. As Elphaba and Glinda, the witches of Oz, move from loathing to competition to true friendship, the author guides readers to examine the comfortable certainty of their own personal goodness and begin to grapple with their own capacity for evil. Exhorting readers to embrace the murky grey of uncertainty, Ross proposes a Creed of Compassion that would allow readers to join the witches in singing, I have been changed for good. The Wicked Truth examines the play Wicked, the musical prequel to the Wizard of Oz, for the moral and ethical issues introduced by the death of the wickedest witch that ever was. When the story of Elphaba, the talented but misunderstood green-skinned outcast who becomes the enemy of the Wizard and all of Oz, is told by Glinda the Good, Elphabas former classmate, a new picture emerges. Was she truly wicked or was wickedness thrust upon [her]? As the story unfolds, Ross explains the mechanism of scapegoating that ensnares the characters, a system where an innocent person or group is vilified and ultimately sacrificed for the benefit and unification of the community. To further the readers understanding, the author enriches her explanations with historical and personal examples. Thedeepening action of the play convincingly illustrates Ross argument that the way society defines being go