Materialistic World

What would you do if everything can be bought through auctioning?  What would you bid on if you have the resource to do so?  I would probably start with on a mason, a couple Lamborghinis, a get-away vacation house, and a private jet airplane as starters if I have to resource to do so.  Objects like these are nice to own, but do they really me you happy?  What will happen after you take ownership of them?  Will they make you happy for the rest of your life?

In Salman Rushdie’s short story, At the Auction of the Rubby Slippers, he attempts to show readers of the excessive desire of society for materialism.  In our world today, we’ve put on price on almost everything.  Everything can almost be bought or sold.  In Rushdie’s short story, everything means literally everything you can think of; your soul, body, friends, wives and husbands.  He calls this place where all your desires can come true as the Court of Demand or the Grandsaler Room.  The hot item being auctioned off at the moment is those ruby slippers.  There’s something magical about these slippers.  “We revere the ruby slippers because we believe they can make us invulnerable to witches….they shine like the footwear of the gods” (92)

The stage is set for the auction of the ruby slippers.  Movie stars are present.  The memorabilia junkies are out there.   Political refugees are there, and orphans have also arrived hoping to be sent back through time and space by the magical slippers to see their parents.  The bids were coming in from all over the world.  “bids came in across the video links with Tokyo, Los Angeles, Paris and Milan.” (100).  They were coming in so fast and in such large amounts, the narrator was losing his nerve, but the narrator knew he had to win it at all cost.  He needed to win it for his cousin, Gale.  The price was rising higher and higher to a point where money was no longer anything but a way of keeping score.  The narrator suddenly entered a state of mind where he felt, “detached from the earth.” (102)  He was entering fictional world where people do crazy things like, “mortgage homes, sell children, to have whatever it is we crave for.” (102).  Then he realized he needed to let go of his desire for these slippers.  He needed to pull out of the bid.  He left the place and woke up in the morning feeling “refreshed and free”(102).

I believe the message Rushdie was trying to get across was that we have become so materialistic in that we have put a price on everything.  Rushdie should be the one to know best because he, himself, had a bounty price of $5 million set on his head.   We are simply obsessed with the things that do not truly bring us tranquility and happiness.  We need to let go of some of our desires.  We do not need to have everything to have everything.  Less is more sometimes.