The Deadly Desert is the magical desert that completely surrounds the fictional Land of Oz. 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 and Glinda chases her over the sands, but in Ozma of Oz, it has become a magical desert with life-destroying sands, 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. 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.
Read more about Deadly Desert: Notable Crossings/killings
Famous quotes containing the words deadly and/or desert:
“The seven deadly sins.... Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man’s neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The skylines lit up at dead of night, the air- conditioning systems cooling empty hotels in the desert and artificial light in the middle of the day all have something both demented and admirable about them. The mindless luxury of a rich civilization, and yet of a civilization perhaps as scared to see the lights go out as was the hunter in his primitive night.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)