Elphaba - Powers and Abilities

Powers and Abilities

In the book, Elphaba does not possess the same knack for magic as her musical counterpart. She has a hidden magic power, but it only emerges when she is moved to extreme anger. This happens twice in the book: Once when the cook of the caravan she is going with to get to the Vinkus threatens to cook Liir after Elphaba had complained about the cook's cruelty to Animals. Shortly thereafter, cook is found dead, his corpse severely swollen as if he had been attacked by bees. Elphaba had some bees with her on the journey, and it is strongly implied that she may have psychically influenced them to kill the cook. She denies that she had done anything to him until the Elephant, Princess Nastoya, tells her that she has a hidden power. The second time she uses this power is when Sarima's son Manek had convinced Liir to hide in the fish well and left him there. Liir nearly drowns, but they are just in time to save him. Elphaba realizes she has motherly feelings for Liir, but her anger at Manek causes her power to jump out again, this time making an icicle fall on Manek and kill him. Each time her power shows itself, it is to protect Liir, and on both occasions, it results in a death.

Another demonstration of Elphaba's innate power occurs when she rescues the infant snow monkey which she later names Chistery: Seeing the monkey stranded on an island in the middle of a lake, Elphaba feels compelled to save him, and runs toward the island despite her mortal allergy to water. As her feet make contact with the surface of the lake, a pane of ice forms beneath them, allowing her to reach the island unharmed. The others in the caravan speculate that the lake had previously been enchanted by a magician, but when Liir recalls the incident in Son of a Witch, he claims that "The world conformed itself to suit her needs", implying that Elphaba did indeed cause the ice to appear, as well as possibly categorizing this power as a form of reality warping. Of course, Liir was rather young at the time, and as he himself admits, he may simply have over-romanticized the incident in his mind. Apart from those incidents, there are others that may or may not be attributed to Elphaba's dormant powers, such as the storm that only she and her roommate Galinda notice or the horns that attack Fiyero. Any magically empowered character in the Land of Oz could well have provoked both these last events.

In the musical, Elphaba possesses the ability to perform a magical attack on anyone toward whom she feels anger. She uses this power twice: Following the song "Dear Old Shiz", Madame Morrible insists upon caring for Nessarose, something that Elphaba has always done herself. When the headmistress ignores her objections, she flies into a rage, and somehow causes everyone standing around Nessarose's wheelchair to be thrown backward. The chair then spins in place for several seconds before reversing into Elphaba's hands. She uses this power a second time when, following the firing of Doctor Dillamond, the new History teacher brings a caged lion cub into the classroom and announces that he intends to prevent the Animal from learning to talk. This enrages Elphaba, and she uses her magic to throw everyone away from the cage and subsequently immobilize them long enough to take the Lion Cub out of the room and set it free. In this instance, her power does not affect Fiyero, the first suggestion that she may have feelings for him.

Besides her specific powers, Elphaba's musical counterpart has amazing power and proficiency with magic in general, to the extent that Madame Morrible insists that she be tutored in sorcery individually. Elphaba can perform the spells of the Grimmerie (reputed to be the most powerful in all the Land of Oz) with ease, even succeeding in creating an effective result when the subject of the spell is many miles away and when she has adapted the incantation to suit the circumstance in which it is used. An example of such a success when both of the aforementioned problems have been in play is the spell she used to save Fiyero from death, although admittedly that spell has the unintended effect of transforming him into a scarecrow. She has also used the book's spells to accomplish feats that appear to be impossible for Ozian magicians, such as enabling things to fly. Toward the end of the musical, it is revealed that the Wizard is in fact Elphaba's father, and Madame Morrible attributes Elphaba's immense magical power to the fact that "she was a child of both worlds".

In both the musical and the novel, Elphaba is shown to have certain precognitive and/or clairvoyant abilities. In the book, the focal point of this power is a mirror made for her by Turtle Heart. She uses the mirror as a scrying tool in early childhood, and through it foresees several events, including the arrival of the Wizard in Oz. Her clairvoyant abilities are in evidence at two points during the musical: During the song "The Wizard and I", Elphaba sings of how she has just experienced "a vision almost like a prophecy", in which she foresees that one day, all of Oz will hold a celebration all to do with her. In a tragic twist, this actually turns out to be the celebration that takes place following her supposed death. The second reference to this ability occurs when she has a vision of Dorothy's house flying through the sky, accompanied by a feeling that Nessarose is in danger. Her seeing the house could be regarded as simply catching sight of it as it is carried by the cyclone, however the fact that Fiyero, who was with her at the time, could not see it seems to support the theory of its being a vision.

Elphaba is able to read the Grimmerie despite the fact that the book is written in 'the lost language of spells'. She first demonstrates this talent when the Wizard asks her to perform a levitation spell on one of his pet monkeys as proof of her powers; she finds exactly the right spell within seconds, reads it as easily as she would her own language, and makes it work perfectly on her first try. However, although she has an instinctive knack for knowing which spell is appropriate in certain cases, and can pronounce the words of the language, she later reveals that she does not actually understand what they mean. In the novel, Elphaba also possesses the ability to read the Grimmerie, but with nowhere near the same facility. She is able to understand fragments of the text, but admits that most of it is "misty to eyes". Despite this, she gleans much magical knowledge from the book over her many years of studying it, and puts the knowledge to good use. In the novel, the Grimmerie is revealed to have been created on Earth, which is why it is illegible to the people of Oz. However, being of mixed Ozian and Earthly blood, Elphaba possesses a natural ability to at least partially understand the contents of the book.