Life Auction

         Have you ever had an experience that you will spend whatever it may cost in order to get it even though the thing is bad? In Salman Rushdie’s novel “East, West”, the main character goes to an auction because of the ruby slippers that Dorothy worn in the Wizard of oz. He’s willing to pay any amount for that because he believes that it will help him to get back Gale if once he holds them. Gale is his course who he was in love with, but one day he came home and he found “her in the arms of a hairy escapee from a caveman movie” (Rushdie P. 98). After that, what he wants is only the moment that he and Gale spent together at home. Therefore, he believes those ruby slippers can help him.

        There are many different kinds of people in the auction, such as movie stars, memorabilia junkies, people dressed as Wizards, Lions, Scarecrows, and Tin Men and there are also political refugees and orphans. All of them are longing to go home because “‘home’ has become such a scattered, damaged, various concept in present travails. There is so much to yearn for. There are so few rainbows anymore…They promised to take us home, but are metaphors of homeliness comprehensible to them, are abstractions permissible?” (Rushdie P.93). He wants to be at home because he wants to get back to the moment that he was with the woman he loved, so he wants the shoes to comprehend that this is home for him. However, the auction makes him become detached from the earth. He says, “the ultimate goal crosses a delirious frontier.  Its achievement and our own survival become –yes!- fictions” (Rushdie P.102). Because nothing is real, therefore it becomes fictions. At the end of the auction, he finally sees Gale. But she has no hold on him anymore, so he leaves the auction and goes back home without her. In the auction, he saw everything was for sale. The Taj Mahal, the Statue of Liberty, the Alps, the Sphinx, even state secrets have been sold to the highest bidder. He says that “most of us nowadays are sick.” (Rushdie P.87) By saying this he is referring to the bidders who define themselves by how much they bid and how much they own.

        He does not want to become one of those people. He sees everything can be placed into the auction and the people who are in the auction can give up everything in order to get what they want. The slippers can let the people go anywhere with anyone and this is exactly what he wanted. However, after he realized that he is worshiping an object, he also realized that he no longer needs the slippers. He understands that the slippers cannot change the fact that Gale cheated on him. Therefore, he forgets about the slippers and Gale as well.