Personality Analysis - The Wicked Witch From The W

Essay by EssaySwap ContributorCollege, Undergraduate February 2008

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The different perspectives on personality can be helpful tools for analyzing human characteristics and behaviors. In ?The Wizard of Oz,? the wicked witch is a prime illustration of how one?s personality can be interpreted; she has a personality that can readily be analyzed and classified by the different theories.

The trait perspective is based on characteristics and dispositions that make up the foundation of an individual?s personality. From the time that the audience is introduced to the witch, she is hot-tempered, irritable, and aggressive. She threatens Dorothy as soon as she realizes that her sister was killed, refusing to allow Dorothy to explain the accident. From then on she is on the offensive and ready to attack at any time. According to Eysencks?s Trait Perspective on Personality, the witch is characterized within the unstable and extroverted dimensions, and therefore, described as having a choleric temperament. In terms of the Big Five characteristics, she is emotionally unstable and lacks agreeableness; she is marked by anxiety rather than calmness, suspicion rather than trustworthiness, and shows no mercy in regard to Dorothy.

According to Gordon Allport, the witch possesses cardinal traits, aggressiveness and irritability, which form the basis of her other personal characteristics, if not make them up completely. She is only portrayed as antagonistic and angry; at no point throughout the movie is she considered to be composed or passive.

The psychodynamic perspectives focus on an individual?s childhood and unconscious.

According to Freud?s Psychosexual Stages of Personality, because the witch has a fixation with repeatedly making verbal threats, she was probably not satisfied during her Oral Stage; she probably had problems weaning as a child. Because the witch is obviously unable to associate well with others, it can also be theorized that she was not completely satisfied during her Latency Stage...