The Ruby Slippers

Often times we are willing to go to extreme measures to pursue the unobtainable. It could be as simple as having a simple notion of what should be in your head, or the loss of a loved one pushing us until we break. Love, however, can often cause the craziest of notions. Love can cause people to jump through hoops, walk on water, and sell their soul but if the person they are not in love with doesn’t feel the same then it doesn’t matter.

We see this in Salman Rushdie’s short story “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers”, in the book East, West. The auction is for the magical ruby slippers that took Dorothy from Kansas to the Wizard of Oz. Many people have come for the auction dressed as witches, scarecrow, lions, and there is even “one corner occupied entirely by Totos” (pp. 89). The narrator is at this auction not as a collector of memorabilia, but as a man with a broken heart willing to spend all he has to try to when the heart of his love, Gale. His recent encounter with her had relit his passion for her and made him willing to try anything to get her back and he feels that the slippers are his key.

Thinking of what may come from having the winning bid only encourages him. He see’s himself “offering the miracle shoes to Gale” or clicking “the magical heels together three times, and win back her heart” (pp.97-98). This is nothing more then a futile attempt to unsuccessfully try for the unattainable and the narrator realizes it as the auction continues. Once he realizes that “in fiction’s grip, we may mortgage our homes, sell our children, to have whatever it is we crave” breaks him from his love’s hold (pp. 102). The narrator ceases his bidding and ends Gales hold over him.
This is a realization that one can only share through experience. To love and not feel love in return is one of the hardest feelings to cope with. Only once you have come to realize that no matter how hard you are willing to try, how far you are willing to go, and how much you are willing to spend will never be able to change the way somebody else feels for you then you can move on. It is often a hard and slow process, but in the end you are a better, stronger person and we see this in the case of the narrator.