Rushdie's satire and real-life parallels

In the modern world, all that matters is fitting into the mold of consumer culture.  BUY, BUY!!  Things = HAPPINESS!  You need this!  Toss that out, this is better. BUY!  That’s what our government tells us to do: spend our money or face the consequences of a recession.  In this day and age, status is key.  It is the proof of our own self worth.  How do we get status?  That’s like asking how one breathes.  You know why I’m better than you?  Check out my vintage bamboo-handle Gucci handbag!  or  I own my own private island!  For me, it’s so frustrating always being told I’m not good enough.  I have a choice: resist the urge to buy and live in perceived mediocrity, or give in and become a consumer goddess.  That’s how things are sold, money is made.  Become one with your consumer’s heart and mind.  This can make you better than everyone else, so this is what you want.  Don’t have it? YOU ARE A NOBODY.

Consumerism is the driving force of our economy.  Sadly, it is also often becomes the driving force of our lives, frequently dwarfing other important values.  When Salman Rushdie was forced into hiding after Ayatollah Khomeini issued a religious fatwa on him, he wrote several stories, one of which turned out to be an amusing yet thoughtful interpretation of the possible future of consumerism itself.  In “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers,” a short story in East, West, Rushdie’s brilliant satire of the commercialization of everyday life is intertwined with a poignant commentary on his own personal exile.

Rushdie’s story takes place in an alternate universe (or perhaps, the bleak, not-so-distant future) of our own current world. 

The item auctioned on this particular day is the pair of ruby slippers of Wizard of Oz fame, and everyone has come out for the occasion.  “The bidders who have assembled for the auction of the magic slippers bear little resemblance to your usual saleroom crowd” (p. 87).  There are Scarecrows, Witches, Wizards, movie stars, vagrants, characters of fiction, and normal people all crowding the auction house, all hoping for a glimpse of or a chance to bid on the shoes.  In a world overwhelmed by fiction and popular culture, the ruby slippers represent to these people a chance to be well again, to have worth as the owner of an icon beloved by millions. The narrator says that, “It is to the Auctioneers we go to establish the value of our pasts, of our futures, of our lives” (p. 101).

Amidst all the chaos of the auction hall, the narrator recalls his reason for desiring the slippers himself.  He recounts a failed past relationship with his cousin “Gale”.  Since their breakup, he has dedicated himself to an almost idol-worship of his embellished conception of the perfect Gale.  The relationship he had with her is in fact his “home” that he is inspired to return to with the help of the slippers.  The narrator’s last sighting of the woman was at a bar, watching the broadcast of a man abandoned to a slow death on Mars.  “The condemned man on another planet…began to sing a squawky medley of half-remembered songs…offering his spaced-out renditions of ‘Swanee’, ‘Show Me the Way to Go Home’ and several numbers from The Wizard of Oz.”  The discarded space man can be interpreted as a clear metaphor of Rushdie himself, in exile, abandoned, and clinging, as the narrator also does, to his idyllic, peaceful past. 

It is only in the end, that the narrator’s “ultimate goal crosses a delirious frontier.  Its achievement and our own survival become – yes! – fictions.  And fictions, as I have come close to suggesting before, are dangerous” (p. 102).  With this realization, he is able to drop out of the bidding, and out of his unrequited love with the now nearly fictitious Gale.  This alludes to Rushdie coming to terms with his exile and learning to look forward, not back.

With the narrator and the author both having come to conclusions on how not to live their lives, this is the message to the reader:

“‘Home’ has become such a scattered, damaged, various concept in our present travails.  There is so much to yearn for.  There are so few rainbows any more.  How hard can we expect even a pair of magic shoes to work? They promised to take us home, but are metaphors of homeliness comprehensible to them, are abstractions permissible?  Are they literalists, or will they permit us to redefine the blessed word?  Are we asking, hoping for, too much?” (p. 93). 

In other words, Rushdie is describing how damaged values and value of the present have become in this world, and that commodities and status symbols (“magic shoes”) are not by themselves enough to cure-all and achieve happiness.  If one short story is enough to help us sober up and realize what is truly important in our lives, this is certainly it.