The Tin Woodman or Tin Woodsman, also known in films as Tin Man, is a character in L. Frank Baum's Oz books.

Originally a regular "meat" man by the name of Nick Chopper, the Tin Woodman used to make his living chopping down trees in the forest. The Wicked Witch of the East enchanted his axe to prevent him from marrying the girl he loved (versions differ as to whether this girl was her maid whom she was loathe to lose, or whether the witch had been contracted to prevent the marriage). One by one the enchanted axe chopped off his limbs, and each time he lost a limb, Nick Chopper replaced it with a prosthetic one made of tin. Finally nothing was left of him but tin. However, the tinsmith who helped him neglected to give him a heart, so that once Nick Chopper was all tin he was no longer able to love the girl he had fallen for.

In The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy Gale befriends the Tin Woodman, and he follows her to the Emerald City to get a heart from the Wizard of Oz. The Wizard sends Dorothy and her friends to kill the Wicked Witch of the West, and the Tin Woodman is invited to rule over the Province of the Winkies, the land that the witch enslaved.

The Wizard turns out to be a humbug, and can only provide a placebo heart made of velvet (in the movie version, a heart-shaped pocket watch). But this is enough to please the Tin Woodman, who with or without a heart was all along the most tender and emotional of Dorothy's companions (just as the Scarecrow was the wisest and the Lion the bravest). When Dorothy returns home, the Tin Woodman returns to the Winkie land to rule as emperor. In later books he even constructs for himself a palace made entirely of tin, from the architecture all the way down to the flowers in the garden.

In The Tin Woodman of Oz, Nick Chopper finally sets out to find his lost love, Nimmee Ammee, but she has already married a man constructed partly out of his own discarded limbs.

A recurring problem for the Tin Woodman in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was his tendency to rust when exposed to the least bit of moisture, such as his own tears of distress for stepping on a bug. For this reason in one sequel he had himself nickel-plated against rust, and the Winkies are very proud to be ruled by the only nickel-plated emperor in history. In Alexander Volkov's Russian translation of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Tin Woodman is dubbed the Iron Woodchopper: Volkov, unlike Baum, was aware that tin does not rust.

In the movie, the Tin Man was played by actor Jack Haley. Buddy Ebsen was originally cast to play the role, but he accidentally breathed in aluminum powder into his lungs and was rushed to a hospital.

External link

• Oz Encyclopedia entry, with picture and sound byte

Trivia

The tinman gene in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster is so called because when it is absent, the flies do not develop a heart. (cf. Azpiazu & Frasch (1993) Genes and Development: 7: 1325-1340.)

Two times in a row on the Teen Titans animated series , Cyborg is referred to as "Tin Man" and references like him wanting a heart are mentioned.