Chistery

Chistery is a character in Gregory Maguire's revisionist novel "" and in its Broadway adaptation, "Wicked". He is one of the winged monkeys which serve Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West.

In the Novels

In the book, Chistery is a baby snow monkey who is abandoned on an island in the middle of a lake. Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) rescues him, and tries to teach him to speak in an attempt to prove Doctor Dillamond's theory that all forms of life (animal, human and sentient Animal) are connected. In "Wicked", he merely repeats what others say to him (often followed by words which sound similar to the first), but when he appears again in "Son of a Witch", he has learned to speak properly. Elphaba later sews wings onto the backs of several monkeys, including Chistery, and uses a spell from the Grimmerie to enable them to fly. Thus, they become the winged monkeys.

In the Musical

When Chistery first appears in the musical, he is a monkey servant of the Wizard of Oz. The Wizard tricks Elphaba into casting a spell that makes Chistery and other monkeys grow wings in order to serve as his spies, and the winged monkeys end up being one of Elphaba's main motivations for turning against the Wizard. She later returns to the Emerald City to set Chistery and all of the other monkeys free, and they join her in the castle at Kiamo Ko as her companions. As in the book, Elphaba tries to teach Chistery how to speak, but to no avail. After Elphaba melts, Chistery gives Glinda the Grimmerie, and speaks her name as his first words.