Cowardly Lion

The Cowardly Lion is a character in the fictional Land of Oz created by American author L. Frank Baum. He is depicted as an African lion, and like all animals in Oz, he can speak.

Although he often doubts himself, the Cowardly Lion nonetheless often demonstrates bravery in the face of danger. Since lions are supposed to be "The King of Beasts", the Cowardly Lion worries his own fear makes him inadequate, failing to understand that courage is not a lack of fear, but acting in the face of fear. His fear is alleviated only in the aftermath of the Wizard's gift, when he is under the influence of a liquid substance the Wizard orders him to drink. He argues that the courage from the Wizard is only temporary, though he continues to do brave deeds.

The Cowardly Lion makes his first appearance in the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. He is the last of the companions Dorothy befriends on her way to the Emerald City where he ambushes her, Toto, Scarecrow, and Tin Woodman. When he tries to bite Toto, Dorothy slaps him. She calls the Lion a coward and the Lion admits that he is. The Cowardly Lion joins her so that he can ask the Wizard for courage, ashamed that he is not brave enough to play his cultural role of the King of the Beasts. Despite outward evidence that he is unreasonably fearful, the Cowardly Lion displays great bravery along the way. During the journey, he leaps across a chasm on the road of yellow brick multiple times, each time with a companion on his back and then leaps back to get the next one. When they come into another, wider chasm, the Cowardly Lion holds off two Kalidahs while the Tin Woodman cuts a tall tree to cross it. In spite of his fears, he still goes off to hunt for his food and he even offers to kill a deer for Dorothy to eat, but the idea makes her uncomfortable.

The Wizard gives the Lion a dish of unknown liquid, telling him it is "courage" to drink. In the remainder of the book, he becomes aggressive and ready to fight. He accompanies Dorothy on her journey to see Glinda, and allows his friends to stand on his back in order to escape the Dainty China Country.

The Lion's favored companion is the Hungry Tiger. This may well be the "Biggest of the Tigers" he and his friends encounter in the Forest of Wild Beasts in the Quadling Country In this forest, all of the lions and many of the other animals have been eaten by a Giant Spider. The Lion finds the Giant Spider asleep and decapitates it. The Tiger and the other animals bow to him and ask him to be their king, and he promises to do so upon his return from accompanying Dorothy to Glinda. Glinda orders the Winged Monkeys to carry him back to the Forest once Dorothy has returned home.

In the rest of Baum's Oz series, the Lion never again played a major role. In later books, the Lion often accompanies Dorothy on her adventures. He is Princess Ozma's chief guardian on state occasions and he and the Hungry Tiger pull Ozma's chariot. In subsequent Oz books by Baum, the Lion was shown to have continued being courageous and loyal, although still considering himself a coward and regularly frightened, even by Aunt Em. He befriended the Hungry Tiger in Ozma of Oz, if this was not the earlier Tiger, which The Patchwork Girl of Oz implies that it is by calling both Lion and Tiger "largest of their kind", and the two have become Ozma's personal guards. In Glinda of Oz he is on Ozma's board of advisers.

In "The Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger" in Little Wizard Stories of Oz, the Lion begins with cowardly bravado, intending to find a man to tear apart and the Tiger a fat baby to devour. Instead, they find a small child, bigger than a baby and return it to its mother.

In a later book in the Oz series, The Cowardly Lion of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson, Mustafa of Mudge, a wealthy sultan at the southern tip of the Munchkin Country, kidnaps the Lion for his large collection of lions that he feels would be incomplete without Oz's most famous lion. He was turned to stone by the giant Crunch, but rescued by American circus clown Notta Bit More and orphan Bobbie Downs, whom the clown prefers to call by the more optimistic-sounding Bob Up.