"Theres No Place Like Home"

In the short story At the Auction of the Ruby Slipper by Salman Rushdie in his book East, West is seemingly about an auction of some mystical red Ruby Slippers like the one in the Wizard of Oz.  This was an often times confusing short story about what seems to be an auction of slippers, but the attendees are from the rich,  poor, different religious groups, and yes even people/things on TV screens, including goblins and ghosts. But, what we should take from this abstract short story is, that each of us will have our own interpretations of what the meaning behind the short story was.

We may wonder what exactly these ruby slippers are and I believe that they represent everything that we have ever wanted in our lives. Every man, woman and child on this earth has something that they desire so much that they would spend any amount of money to get that item. Case in point, the ruby slippers, many of the attendees wanted the ruby slippers so that they could use them to correct past mistakes. The ruby slippers in our lives may vary from person to person, but we all have things that we most desire and would want to attain at any cost.   For myself my ‘ruby slippers’ would have to be getting my dream job as a Financial Planner, it has been my lifelong ambition to become a Financial Planner and I would do anything, spend anything so that I could achieve this dream job.  The reason that I believe that they are so valuable, is that in the short story it gives the bidders the opportunity to go back and fix some past mistakes that they may have made. In reality, to me it is so valuable to me because it is my lifelong ambition to become a Financial Planner which is very valuable to me and everybody has his/her own ‘ruby slippers’ that they will be willing to do anything/everything for and that makes it very valuable to themselves as well.

The bidders in this short story to me represent ourselves, myself, yourself in which we are all bidding or vying for our own ‘ruby slippers’. Each of us have our own interpretation of what our ruby slippers will be and thus we all have different levels of how much those slippers means to ourselves. With this we have our desires and our needs to ‘bid’ for this most precious item, the ruby slippers. The auctioneers, I believe represent everything that is toying with us, making it harder, more expensive to attain those ruby slippers. The auctioneers may be different people, events, goals, objectives to overcome so that you can ‘buy’ your ruby slippers. For my example, one of the auctioneers would have to be needing a college education, because there are very few people out in the world that would take financial advice from a person whom is not at least college educated.  The attendees at the auction to me represent every other person, man; woman, child and being in the world that is out there vying for the very same ruby slippers. To them those slippers are their own dreams, the dreams that they would spend anything and do anything to get those slippers or those dreams.

“Everything is for sale…in the courtroom of demand” this phrase to me represents everything else in our lives that we want, but not as important as the ruby slippers. This can be that semi dream car that you have been saving up for, for several months now to the vacation of a life time. All of these are in our reach within our lives and attainable but have not reached the level of the ruby slippers. Annie Leonard presented the “The Story of Stuff”, which was her political ideology of how our stuff is pretty much ruining this planet and our lives. After reading the short story I do not believe that his is her worst nightmare because my idea of the ruby slippers was anything that someone has most desired, not just stuff.

It took me a while to realize that this story was truly about, mainly because it was done in such a context, made it confusing to follow and to see what the true message behind the story was. Although as for many of Salman Rushide’s novels and short stories, the main passage or story will vary from person to person. But in this instance I believe that the ruby slippers that were on auction represents everything that we have ever wanted in our lives, the auctioneers represents all of the achievements or goals that we must accomplish to attain these ruby slippers. Finally all of the other merchandise in the auction to me represents all the other things that we desire in our lives but are not nearly at the level as the ruby slippers.