The Auction of Happiness

"Happiness: We rarely feel it.
I would buy it, beg it, steal it,
Pay in coins of dripping blood
For this one transcendent good."

These words from poet Amy Lowell speak of the dark side of the human desire for happiness. Some would take desperate measures to find happiness in one form or another, even as far as buying it, begging for it, or stealing it.  No matter who you may be or where you live, however, the one unifying want is to be happy.  Some people search for happiness through money, power, sex, drugs, and other shallow means, but what they are truly looking for in these vices is to feel happy. 

In Salman Rushdie’s story, “The Auction of the Ruby Slippers” from his novel East, West, the special shoes are an item after which everyone is yearning.  They hold a special power that people are willing to pay unthinkable amounts of money to own.  Even in the movie The Wizard of Oz, the ruby slippers protected Dorothy, caused the Wicked Witch of the West to attempt murder to have them in her grasp, and provided an easy way home for Dorothy in the end.  The slippers held an unmatched power, a power they retain in “The Auction of the Ruby Slippers.”

The world within this story is of the future and imagination, with movie stars radiating colored auras, figures from famous paintings coming alive, and national monuments and human souls being held for public auction.  An extremely important auction is taking place from the narrator’s point of view.  It is an auction for a pair of ruby slippers, the ones made famous by Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz.  This sale is the auction of the century, and one of the biggest events in this fictional world.  To the people of the story, the ruby slippers represent happiness, in a tangible sense.  The narrator says, “We revere the ruby slippers because of their powers of reverse metamorphosis, their affirmation of a lost state of normalcy in which we have almost ceased to believe and to which the slippers promise us we can return” (92).  The slippers symbolize rescue from a world that has evolved into a strange and disturbing place.  As Dorothy once did, anyone who owns the slippers can simply click their heels together three times and say, “There’s no place like home.”  The slippers have the power to return their owner back home, even if it no longer exists in this imagined world of the future. 

The narrator explains the bizarre world he lives in, saying, “This permeation of the real world by the fictional is a symptom of the moral decay of our post-millennial culture” (94).  Rushdie is making a jibe at our culture in today’s world.  More and more, entertainment is becoming an enormous part of our culture.  For instance, TV shows and celebrity gossip are a huge part of media coverage today.  With Britney Spears making headlines, and even CNN analyzing the ups and downs of celebrities in rehab, entertainment is becoming our culture.  The “moral decay” Rushdie writes about, is something the world is experiencing today.  While it may not be as dramatic as the world in “The Auction of the Ruby Slippers,” there is still a declining sense of meaningful, intellectual culture in the world as a whole. 

Even when the world outside is becoming a disaster, the bidders and guests at the auction do not care.  The narrator says, “There’s an explosion in the street outside.  We hear running feet, sirens, screams. Such things have become commonplace. We stay where we are, absorbed by a higher drama” (101).  The only thing that matters to them is winning the ruby slippers, or witnessing what lucky individual obtains them.  The entertainment of the auction takes over their minds, causing them to pay no mind to the atrocities occurring right outside the auction house.  This is satirizing the attitude that people as a whole, especially the media, has toward the terrible events that happen every day in our world.  While wars are waging, diseases claim thousands of lives, and famines rage across the planet, the news channels continuously show images of celebrities.  People are compassionate in this world, yet many are absorbed by the unimportant drama of the entertainment world.   

On a more positive note, Anne Frank wrote, “We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives are all different and yet the same.”  While the shoes in “The Auction of the Ruby Slippers” may cause people to be greedy and self-absorbed, happiness is still the need that unites every person imaginable.  No matter how different we may be, we all want to be happy.