At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers

Power, a strong word in today’s society of war and hatred. It seems we live in a world that is teetering on a razor’s edge, waiting for the day that the entire world breaks out into all out chaos all over this one word. How can one word bring with it so many issues and problems that countries bicker and threaten each other on a daily basis, you remove one tyrannical leader from a country and another all out civil war breaks out over control and power, what’s the difference from the original dictator. Countries isolate and contain themselves, stating that they wish to live separate from the world, but then they demand sanctions be lifted and external goods imported. Today’s world of dictators bureaucracy is a all about power and who has more of it. In his novel East, West, Salman Rushdie makes a good point of what power and greed can do for a government.

Rushdie starts his story “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers” by first setting a tyrannical setting as similarly described in the story of The Wizard of Oz, where only the people in charge have all the power. In The Wizard of Oz it was the wicked witches that instilled great fear in everyone across the lands, whereas here the auctioneers possess that power. They command the police and everything that is of any value, of course you can have it for a price. Rushdie explains of the hoards of different fantasy characters showing up to purchase the all valuable Ruby Red slippers with the power and might everyone has come to recognize on the feet of one Judy Garland so many years ago. “We revere the Ruby slippers because we believe they can make us invulnerable to witches;” the slippers portray the power to go back in time and protect fallen family even protection from magical characters that they have come to fear so much. I think Rushdie is attacking the very element of greed and power in today’s society. If the great Taj Mahal or the Statue of Liberty can be auctioned off for a price then the world we know of, separate nations with the greatest national pride, have all disappeared and greed has conquered all we know. I think Rushdie is in a way foreshadowing what is to become of this frail world with its little inhabitants constantly battling and vying for control.

Rushdie openly attacks what is means to be in power and cynically compares the fairy tale creatures from The Wizard of Oz to those of current political parties and their counterparts. He continues on to say that everything eventually has a price and even your soul can be sold to demons for the right price. Nothing is exempt from the horrors of the auctioneers, not even something you can’t sell.

This story of light hearted comparison between the world today and the fantasy world of The Wizard of Oz may not be that different after all. If you figuratively compare the situations we a country face daily with respect to global and political position we may be the auctioneers, waiting to go out and conquer what are country desires most.

I believe in the buyers not the auctioneers.