Nick Chopper: The Tin Man (Creative Writing, Teaching and Learning)
By Don Allen (2026) Creative Writing, Teaching and Learning.
One afternoon, I walked into my high school English class carrying a worn copy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), by L. Frank Baum. My students looked up at me like I had just pulled something ancient out of a trunk. I told them this wasn’t just a children’s story. It was personal.
I first met this book in the 1970s, sitting in Mr. Boone’s sixth-grade classroom at Bancroft Elementary in Minneapolis. Back then, school had a rhythm to it. We read about tornadoes, silver shoes, and brick roads in the morning. By afternoon, we were in the gym, or home economics, or waiting our turn in woodshop. The day felt full. Stories felt like doorways.
So when I opened Baum’s 1900 novel in front of seventy teenagers, I wasn’t just assigning reading. I was inviting them into something that once opened my own world.
We read carefully. We asked questions. By the time we reached Chapter 5, the room shifted. That’s where the Tin Woodman appears. Not the shiny movie version. Not the comic sidekick. The real one.
In the book, he is Nick Chopper.
Nick isn’t born metal. He’s a woodcutter in Munchkin Country. He works hard. He’s in love. He plans to marry Nimmie Amee. Then the Wicked Witch of the East curses his axe. One swing, and it cuts his leg. A tinsmith named Ku-Klip replaces it. Then the other leg. Then an arm. Then the other. Piece by piece, his body is taken from him and rebuilt in tin.
He keeps going.
That’s the part that hit my students.
He keeps going.
By the time his entire body is replaced, something else is gone too. He doesn’t notice it at first. He can still move. He can still speak. But when he meets Dorothy and the Scarecrow, he tells them what he wants most: a heart.
Not because he needs it to live.
Because he wants to feel again.
When I explained that Nick once stood in the rain, rusted solid, frozen mid-swing until someone oiled his joints, the room went quiet. Dorothy and the Scarecrow don’t just free him physically. They restore his ability to move forward.
And that’s when my students started connecting the dots.
The Tin Man isn’t empty. He’s layered. He isn’t emotionless. He’s grieving. He isn’t weak. He’s surviving.
He loved Nimmie Amee. He planned a future. He believed in something steady. And then, one accident at a time, that life was stripped away. Flesh replaced by tin. Warmth replaced by metal. The curse wasn’t just about his limbs. It was about what happens when loss keeps coming, and you don’t even realize how much of yourself is disappearing.
That’s not a fairy tale problem. That’s human.
Nick doesn’t cry because he can’t. He doesn’t ache because he thinks he’s incapable of it. But when Nimmie leaves, afraid of what he has become, that absence lands somewhere deep inside him. He doesn’t have the language for it. So he calls it the need for a heart.
When we closed the book that day, my students understood something the movie never quite captures. The Tin Woodman isn’t a machine trying to become human. He is a human who lost pieces of himself and is trying to believe he can still love.
And maybe that’s the real lesson Baum tucked inside a children’s story.
People aren’t always what they look like. Strength doesn’t always shine. Sometimes it rusts quietly in the rain. Sometimes it waits for someone to hand over the oil.
Back in Mr. Boone’s classroom, I didn’t see all that. I just followed the yellow brick road like everyone else. But standing in front of seventy high school students years later, I saw it clearly.
The Wizard doesn’t give Nick something new. He gives him a symbol. The heart was there all along.
And that’s why the Tin Man still matters.
I first met this book in the 1970s, sitting in Mr. Boone’s sixth-grade classroom at Bancroft Elementary in Minneapolis. Back then, school had a rhythm to it. We read about tornadoes, silver shoes, and brick roads in the morning. By afternoon, we were in the gym, or home economics, or waiting our turn in woodshop. The day felt full. Stories felt like doorways.
So when I opened Baum’s 1900 novel in front of seventy teenagers, I wasn’t just assigning reading. I was inviting them into something that once opened my own world.
We read carefully. We asked questions. By the time we reached Chapter 5, the room shifted. That’s where the Tin Woodman appears. Not the shiny movie version. Not the comic sidekick. The real one.
In the book, he is Nick Chopper.
Nick isn’t born metal. He’s a woodcutter in Munchkin Country. He works hard. He’s in love. He plans to marry Nimmie Amee. Then the Wicked Witch of the East curses his axe. One swing, and it cuts his leg. A tinsmith named Ku-Klip replaces it. Then the other leg. Then an arm. Then the other. Piece by piece, his body is taken from him and rebuilt in tin.
He keeps going.
That’s the part that hit my students.
He keeps going.
By the time his entire body is replaced, something else is gone too. He doesn’t notice it at first. He can still move. He can still speak. But when he meets Dorothy and the Scarecrow, he tells them what he wants most: a heart.
Not because he needs it to live.
Because he wants to feel again.
When I explained that Nick once stood in the rain, rusted solid, frozen mid-swing until someone oiled his joints, the room went quiet. Dorothy and the Scarecrow don’t just free him physically. They restore his ability to move forward.
And that’s when my students started connecting the dots.
The Tin Man isn’t empty. He’s layered. He isn’t emotionless. He’s grieving. He isn’t weak. He’s surviving.
He loved Nimmie Amee. He planned a future. He believed in something steady. And then, one accident at a time, that life was stripped away. Flesh replaced by tin. Warmth replaced by metal. The curse wasn’t just about his limbs. It was about what happens when loss keeps coming, and you don’t even realize how much of yourself is disappearing.
That’s not a fairy tale problem. That’s human.
Nick doesn’t cry because he can’t. He doesn’t ache because he thinks he’s incapable of it. But when Nimmie leaves, afraid of what he has become, that absence lands somewhere deep inside him. He doesn’t have the language for it. So he calls it the need for a heart.
When we closed the book that day, my students understood something the movie never quite captures. The Tin Woodman isn’t a machine trying to become human. He is a human who lost pieces of himself and is trying to believe he can still love.
And maybe that’s the real lesson Baum tucked inside a children’s story.
People aren’t always what they look like. Strength doesn’t always shine. Sometimes it rusts quietly in the rain. Sometimes it waits for someone to hand over the oil.
Back in Mr. Boone’s classroom, I didn’t see all that. I just followed the yellow brick road like everyone else. But standing in front of seventy high school students years later, I saw it clearly.
The Wizard doesn’t give Nick something new. He gives him a symbol. The heart was there all along.
And that’s why the Tin Man still matters.
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