No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, Unless it is Made by the Good Guys.

When you think of the Wicked Witch of the West, you normally think of "Ill get you my pretty, and your little dog too!", not necessarily a misunderstood teenager. In the book (and now Broadway hit), Wicked, the classic quest story gets thrown around and ultimately smashed to pieces...sort of. You have the archetypes regarding the pieces of a quest, the knight (Elphaba), the dangerous road (terrible, messed up life), in a sense, a goal of being normal, the princess (well in this case the prince, Fiyero) and the evil knight and the dragon are the Wizard and Madame Morrible. It looks like everything is according to plan. Wicked is a retelling of the Wizard of Oz, whose protagonist is Elphaba Thropp, destined to be the Wicked Witch of the West. In her mind, her "holy grail" is just to be a normal girl. Her quest does not seem to be following any of the baselines. So that is the question; is Wicked a quest or not?

A quest is some sort of journey leading to a conclusion, with some classic character plot lines that seem to be repeated constantly: the evil cheerleader, the handsome football captain, the snarky best friend, and the normal white protagonist. That is why Wicked seems to "Defy Gravity"; it throws the traditional sense of a quest into the wind. The lead is a girl of a different color, her best friend is the popular girl who is the best a person can be, and the popular jock chooses the lead over the pretty, preppy, popular girl. In the story, she has always envied the Wizard and all things that come with him. She eventually figures out that he is in fact the evil knight, and rebels against him, ostracizing herself to a life of pain and sadness as a wicked witch. She tries to save her sister, her sister gets killed. She trys to save Fiyero and friend, Boq, and ends up turning them into the Scarecrow and the Tinman to save their lives.  In turn, all of her good deeds end up hurting her, making herself think she is wicked through and through. If she was considered a good person, which was her dream, she would not have gotten punished for her deeds, so her quest might have seemed to failed. Classically, quests usually turn out to a happy ending; the girl gets the football jock, vice versa. In the book of Wicked, she gets killed accidentally by Dorothy Gale, who trys to save her by throwing water on her flaming cape. In the show, she gets pseudo-killed, by citizens thinking that the whole water allergy thing is true. She in turn runs off with Fiyero and leaves Oz for good. In either situation,the plot is a quest. 

But how is that? According to How to Read Literature Like a Professor (by Thomas C. Foster) a quest is defined as stated above. Wicked conforms to those archetypes, just in a different manner. She has her quest, but it does not end up with the "holy grail" she originally intended. She runs off with Fiyero in order to save her friend, the Good Witch, Glinda. So in her quest, her motives shift from establishing her self worth to saving her friendship and her various relationships.  So is she wicked, or just a very faithful family member and friend? According to a quest storyline, she is a hero, and a wicked one at that.