How did Aunt Em change in response to the twister in 'The Wizard of Oz'?

Answer 1

From the description by author and Oz series originator Lyman Frank Baum [May 15, 1856-May 5, 1919], Aunt Em seemed to fade into the overall gray drabness of the great prairies of Kansas. She was as gaunt and thin as the sunburned blades of grass, as dull and humorless as the sunblistered paint on the family farmhouse. Were the main sounds in such a depressed place the background sighings of disappointments, regrets, and sacrifices? So one might assume. For Aunt Em came to life in response to two sounds: that of Dorothy's merry laughter, and that of the cyclone's deafeningly high winds. In response to both, Aunt Em would scream. In the case of the former, it was at the thought that anyone could find anything to laugh at in such a harsh, precarious world. In the case of the latter, Baum described Aunt Em as becoming particularly frightened. And Aunt Em's terror over the deathly, destructive powers of cylones might have been best explained by reference to the fear, as expressed in The Bible, that those who had almost nothing would lose even that.