H. M. Woggle-Bug, T. E. (Highly Magnified and Thoroughly Educated), commonly called the Wogglebug

Region/Culture: North America
Mythos: Literary Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Heroes and Mortals
Mythical Attributes: An ordinary tiny insect made permanently enormous and instantly learned by years of eavesdropping on a schoolmaster’s lessons and an accidental microscope projection.
Role in Mythos: A pompous but loyal companion to the heroes of Oz and founder of the Royal College of Athletic Arts in the Munchkin Country.
Relation to Humans: He treats people with the same expansive condescension he brings to everyone else and is unaware that anyone finds it grating. In Oz he passes for one of them, dressed in human clothes and given a respectable academic title, though no one ever quite forgets he is a bug.

A country schoolhouse on a warm afternoon in the Land of Oz: chalk dust hanging in slatted sunlight, the steady drone of a lecture, and on the back wall a screen onto which Professor Nowitall has just projected the magnified image of a small dark insect. The insect on the screen is the size of a man. It is also, as it happens, alive. Standing there for the first time in his vast new proportions, the woggle-bug bows. He is delighted with himself. A little girl on the windowsill takes one look at him and topples backward, everyone rushes out to see if she has broken anything, and the woggle-bug, still magnified, leaps from the screen and walks away into Oz.

He has never gone back down to his original size. He never seems to want to.

The Highly Magnified Woggle-Bug, Thoroughly Educated, or H. M. Woggle-Bug, T. E. as he prefers to be addressed, was born a normal insect about the size of a pea. He lived an ordinary insect’s life until he crawled into a country schoolhouse Nowitall ran somewhere in Oz and spent the better part of three years listening to lectures from under a desk. By the time the professor put him under the microscope for a classroom demonstration, the bug had absorbed every subject the school taught: mathematics, geography, languages, philosophy. The magnification was meant to be a brief educational projection. Instead it became permanent, and the bug stepped into the world a fully educated gentleman who happened to be a beetle the height of a man.

He stands roughly as tall as a person and looks much like one without close inspection. The body is rounded, broad at the back and flatter at the front, the back a glistening dark brown that catches light like polished wood. The front is striped, light brown and white in alternating bands. His arms and legs are slender, his feet are delicate, and his toes curl up at the ends. His neck is long. His head is shaped somewhere between an insect’s and a man’s, with a pair of antennae that come not from the top of the head but from the tips of his ears and the end of his nose, curling outward like the tendrils of a vine. The eyes are black and a little too large, and they protrude. He has had a swallow-tail coat made for himself in dark blue with a yellow silk lining, and almost always wears a fresh flower in the buttonhole.

He speaks like a man who has never once been interrupted. Long words, Latin phrases, ill-considered puns offered with the confidence of original wit. His companions tolerate him because he means well. Even his close friends in Oz have been known to wince. When the woggle-bug first joined Tip’s party in L. Frank Baum’s *The Marvelous Land of Oz*, the others took a few hours to realize that the great walking insect was harmless, and a few more to realize that they would not be allowed to forget any of his accomplishments. He was, he reminded them, both magnified and educated, and as far as he knew the only being in Oz to be either to such a degree.

In time he settled into a position that suited him perfectly. He founded the Royal College of Athletic Arts, set in the western Munchkin Country a short distance from the Emerald City. The college was his solution to what he considered the great inefficiency of education. Students should not be made to sit indoors reading when they could be running and wrestling outside. He invented Tablets of Learning: small school pills, one for arithmetic, one for geography, one for spelling, one for handwriting, and required his students to swallow the appropriate tablet at the start of each day. The lessons took a few seconds. The rest of the day was free for exercise. The college thrived. By the time of Dorothy’s later visits to Oz, in books like *The Emerald City of Oz*, athletic competitions on its grounds were a recurring stop on Ozian tours, and the woggle-bug himself, in cap and gown and spectacles, had become a fixture of the country’s intellectual life.

He runs on enthusiasm. His real abilities are unusual rather than impressive. He can remember almost anything he has ever heard, he can produce a Latin phrase for any occasion, he can lecture on any subject without notes, and he can read his students’ faces for laziness with depressing accuracy. He invented the Tablets of Learning, which by Ozian standards is no small piece of magic. He is willing to walk into any adventure his friends are walking into. He fights when asked, badly. He is brave in a distracted sort of way.

His weaknesses are mostly social. He has no instinct for when a joke is welcome. His vanity is bottomless and surfaces at any provocation. He insists on his full title and is hurt when it is shortened. He believes his puns to be witty and delivers them in places where wit is not in season. Physically he is still a bug. The shell is glossy but not armored. The legs are slender. In any real fight he is the first of his friends to be in trouble, and he knows this even if he will not say so.

He has never seemed to dwell on any of it. There are lectures to give, and a college to run, and somewhere in the next chapter another adventure is starting without him.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the Wogglebug in L. Frank Baum’s Oz books?

The Wogglebug is a sentient, man-sized insect introduced in L. Frank Baum’s *The Marvelous Land of Oz*. His full title is H. M. Woggle-Bug, T. E., short for Highly Magnified and Thoroughly Educated. He travels with Tip’s party to the Emerald City and later returns in *The Emerald City of Oz* and other Oz books.

How did the Wogglebug become magnified?

The Wogglebug was originally a tiny insect about the size of a pea who lived in Professor Nowitall’s country schoolhouse in Oz. After three years of eavesdropping on Nowitall’s lessons, he was placed under a microscope and projected onto a classroom screen, where his magnified form became permanent after he leapt down and escaped. The Wogglebug has never returned to his original size.

What is the Royal College of Athletic Arts in Oz?

The Royal College of Athletic Arts is the institution the Wogglebug founded in the western Munchkin Country of Oz, a short distance from the Emerald City. Its purpose is to free students from long hours of book learning so they can spend their days on athletic exercise instead. The college appears in *The Emerald City of Oz* and remains the Wogglebug’s most lasting contribution to the country.

What are the Tablets of Learning?

The Tablets of Learning are small instructional pills invented by the Wogglebug for use at his college. Each tablet, when swallowed, instantly grants knowledge of a single subject: one for arithmetic, one for geography, one for spelling, one for handwriting. The system reduces a day’s study to a few seconds and frees students for athletics.

What is the Wogglebug’s personality like?

The Wogglebug is pompous, vain, and relentlessly fond of his own jokes and Latin phrases. Despite the comedy, he is brave, loyal to his friends, and genuinely accomplished in his way. He insists on his full title and is hurt when it is shortened.