Auctions for Everyone ... ..

Every now and again, I find myself browsing ebay just to see what is out there. Sometimes i'll be looking for a specific item, while other times just looking for a good deal. I have won and lost auctions while bidding for something I wanted, although sometimes I probably could have done without it, as my bank account might have been a little scarce. Either way you can almost find anything you are looking for, whether you need it or not, at the online auction that is known as EBAY!!

In "East, West" by Salman Rushdie, He brings up an item for sale at an auction. The item up for bids is the pair of ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz. Since this was a time before Ebay, if you were not in house at the auction, you were bidding by phone or had someone at the auction for you. Rushdie hypes these slippers up to be quite fantastic and magical. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, is coming up to see these slippers in all their splendor. Some people blinded by their own lust for the shoes end up dieing as a result of coming too close to the barrier. Others simply drool by them, while a janitor near by hastily cleans up after them. Rushdie explains why everyone is their for their own special reason, and why someone would desire to have those slippers.

These slippers represent something sacred to the people, He goes on to suggest they are magical and keep the owner safe from witches, as their has been alot of them around lately. I believe Rushdie is merely saying that people need objects to grab a hold of to escape reality. These sacred objects allow people to momentarily slip out of normality and into a state of relief from one's problems. Rushdie goes on to explain that during the height of auction one can become trapped under fiction's grip, and it is by fiction's grip that people sell their houses, and children in order to get what it is they crave. On the other half though is the moment you leave yourself and are able to let go of everything to become weightless, until that object has no power over you anymore. It is at that moment you can finally feel refreshed and well again.

What Rushdie is relating through this crazy auction of magical shoes, is that even though society may seem lowly and morally wrong for auctioning off items that should be placed in sacred keeping. He is also saying that the people need to be able to dream for these items in order to believe that they can be whoever they want, and acheive whatever they want.