Why does a man made of sticks and straw elicit simultaneous feelings of sympathy and horror?

As a child I watched the 1939 MGM movie The Wizard of Oz on television once every year until I outgrew it. Of course I eventually grew back into it, but that’s another story. When I watched the Scarecrow ask Dorothy to cut him down from his post, and as he became acquainted with his own body while attempting to walk for the first time, I was both terrified for him and terrified of him. I was terrified for him because he seemed defenseless. I was terrified of him because he was made of straw; he wasn’t supposed to radiate with life. The Scarecrow was self-deprecating and charming, and as the film progressed, I got over my fear. But I never got over my sense of awe that someone made a scarecrow and it came to life.

Many years later I discovered the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, who remains one of my favorite authors. His short story “Feathertop: A Moralized Legend” (1852) features a scarecrow that multiplied the old scarecrow inspired chill by several factors. The story stars Mother Rigby, a self-described witch of New England, who wakes one morning determined to build a scarecrow to protect her corn. She decides she’s done enough dark magic and, for a change, will build a handsome scarecrow.

The most important item of all, probably, although it made so little show, was a certain broomstick, on which Mother Rigby had taken many an airy gallop at midnight, and which now served the scarecrow by way of a spinal column, or, as the unlearned phrase it, a backbone. One of its arms was a disabled flail which used to be wielded by Goodman Rigby, before his spouse worried him out of this troublesome world; the other, if I mistake not, was composed of the pudding stick and a broken rung of a chair, tied loosely together at the elbow. As for its legs, the right was a hoe handle, and the left an undistinguished and miscellaneous stick from the woodpile. Its lungs, stomach, and other affairs of that kind were nothing better than a meal bag stuffed with straw. Thus we have made out the skeleton and entire corporosity of the scarecrow, with the exception of its head; and this was admirably supplied by a somewhat withered and shrivelled pumpkin, in which Mother Rigby cut two holes for the eyes and a slit for the mouth, leaving a bluish-colored knob in the middle to pass for a nose. It was really quite a respectable face.

“I’ve seen worse ones on human shoulders, at any rate,” said Mother Rigby. “And many a fine gentleman has a pumpkin head, as well as my scarecrow.”

After dressing the newly formed scarecrow in some ancient finery, Mother Rigby admires him, eventually deciding he is too fine looking for the garden, so she brings him to life by commanding him to puff on her magic pipe. The poor scarecrow does as he is asked, but he can’t seem to puff fast enough or hard enough to please Mother Rigby, whose rage surfaces when he fails to desire for himself what she has determined he will be.

The scarecrow gasped, struggled, and at length emitted a murmur, which was so incorporated with its smoky breath that you could scarcely tell whether it were indeed a voice or only a whiff of tobacco. Some narrators of this legend hold the opinion that Mother Rigby’s conjurations and the fierceness of her will had compelled a familiar spirit into the figure, and that the voice was his.

“Mother,” mumbled the poor stifled voice, “be not so awful with me! I would fain speak; but being without wits, what can I say?”

It becomes a game for Mother Rigby: send the wretch out into the world for a bit of fun, though the wretch himself would rather not, at first. After several more puffs on the pipe, the magic makes the scarecrow more and more human-like, as long as he keeps puffing. Mother Rigby sends him off to woo pretty Polly Gookin, daughter of the local magistrate.

Feathertop, as he is now named, strides through the village, admired by all who see him, except for a dog and a child, who appear to see too clearly through the pipe smoke and cannot be fooled. Polly Gookin is mortified when she first meets Feathertop to think that her common prettiness is no match for his distinguished elegance, and she falls thoroughly under his spell, until, in a moment of vanity Polly peers into a mirror in which she and Feathertop are both reflected. In the mirror Polly sees Feathertop for what he really is, and she faints. Poor Feathertop is utterly humiliated. He returns to Mother Rigby, telling her:

Let [Polly] alone, mother . . . the girl was half won; and methinks a kiss from her sweet lips might have made me altogether human. But . . . I’ve seen myself, mother! I’ve seen myself for the wretched, ragged, empty thing I am! I’ll exist no longer!

Feathertop smashes the pipe and falls apart. Mother Rigby decides to use him in the garden after all, though she toys with the idea of bringing him back to life and sending him into the world again.

Was L. Frank Baum, creator of the Wizard of Oz series of books (beginning in 1900), inspired by Hawthorne’s Feathertop when he created both the Scarecrow and Jack Pumpkinhead?

According to Wikipedia, Baum said inspiration for Oz came mainly from the Grimms, Hans Christian Andersen, and Lewis Carroll, but many “of the characters, props, and ideas in the novel were drawn from [his] experiences. As a child, Baum frequently had nightmares of a scarecrow pursuing him across a field. Moments before the scarecrow’s “ragged hay fingers” nearly gripped his neck, it would fall apart before his eyes. Decades later as an adult, Baum integrated his tormentor into the novel as the Scarecrow.”

Perhaps Baum’s nightmare vision was inspired by Feathertop without Baum recalling the source.

The following might seem a tad off topic, but when you get to Andy Partridge’s statement about what inspired him to write the song, you’ll see why I included it.

“The Ballad Of Peter Pumpkinhead”

Peter Pumpkinhead came to town
Spreading wisdom and cash around
Fed the starving and housed the poor
Showed the vatican what gold’s for
But he made too many enemies
Of the people who would keep us on our knees
Hooray for Peter Pumpkin
Who’ll pray for Peter Pumpkinhead?
Oh my!
Peter Pumpkinhead pulled them all
Emptied churches and shopping malls
Where he spoke, it would raise the roof
Peter Pumpkinhead told the truth
But he made too many enemies…
Peter Pumpkinhead put to shame
Governments who would slur his name
Plots and sex scandals failed outright
Peter merely said
Any kind of love is alright
But he made too many enemies…
Peter Pumpkinhead was too good
Had him nailed to a chunk of wood
He died grinning on live TV
Hanging there he looked a lot like you
And an awful lot like me!
But he made too many enemies…
Hooray for Peter Pumpkin
Who’ll pray for Peter Pumpkin
Hooray for Peter Pumpkinhead
Oh my oh my oh!
Doesn’t it make you want to cry oh?

Many have guessed at what Peter Pumpkinhead symbolizes, but the writer of the lyrics, Andy Partridge, said, “Actually the name’s from a jack-o-lantern I carved. After Halloween, I stuck it on a fence post in my garden and every day I’d go past it on my way to my composing shed. And every day it would decay a bit more. I felt so sorry for it, I thought I’d make it a hero in a song.”

“Creation” by Jeffrey Ford, published May 2011 in Fantasy Magazine (and available here), is the story of a boy who, inspired by the Biblical story of the creation of Adam, goes into the woods alone to try his own hand at creation:

It was midsummer and the dragonflies buzzed, the squirrels leaped from branch to branch, frightened sparrows darted away. The sun beamed in through gaps in the green above, leaving, here and there, shifting puddles of light on the pine-needle floor. Within one of those patches of light, I practiced creation. There was no clay, so I used an old log for the body. The arms were long, five-fingered branches that I positioned jutting out from the torso. The legs were two large birch saplings with plenty of spring for running and jumping. These I laid angled to the base of the log.

A large hunk of bark that had peeled off an oak was the head. On this I laid red mushroom eyes, curved barnacles of fungus for ears, a dried seedpod for a nose. The mouth was merely a hole I punched through the bark with my penknife. Before affixing the fern hair to the top of the head, I slid beneath the curve of the sheet of bark those things I thought might help to confer life—a dandelion gone to ghostly seed, a cardinal’s wing feather, a see-through quartz pebble, a twenty-five-cent compass. The ferns made a striking hairdo, the weeds, with their burrlike ends, formed a venerable beard. I gave him a weapon to hunt with: a long, pointed stick that was my exact height.

The boy is overwhelmed by what he has done, feeling Christian guilt over playing God, and goes back to the woods to dismantle his stick man, but the stick man is gone. All through the summer and into autumn, the boy worries about how his stick man will make out; he worries about the fallout from his act of creation. The story has hints of Hawthorne and Shelley, with significant father-son bonding, coming-of-age elements. It’s a wonderful read and I encourage you to use the link above to see for yourself.

And now I find that this topic has me thinking about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Of course, Victor Frankenstein doesn’t create a stick man. His creation is more complicated than that, but isn’t the sense of dread, mixed with awe and wonder, the same? The thought of having all that power–the power to make a scarecrow come to life, or to conjure a Peter Pumpkinhead who’s too good for this world and is crushed by it, or for a boy to step into the woods and bring to life a pile of sticks, a life that he will ultimately be responsible for–it’s too much. It’s overwhelming. It’s terrifying and thrilling at the same time. And just as the creation of Adam was the boy’s inspiration, so it really does begin there, with God creating Adam out of clay.

And yet I’m sure it goes back much further. It’s archetypal, it’s powerful, but when did it begin, this imaginary co-creative act that leaves the world, if not better, perhaps a little wiser?