Ruby Slippers ~BLOG~

');">');">

       When you are as homesick as I am, you will do just about anything to go back home, even if it means trying to get your hands on a pair of sparkling red women’s shoes. I know what it is like to want to go home and not have any way to get there. It is not hard for me to understand people wanting to buy the slippers. The Ruby Slippers are symbolic for home. Most Americans are trying to find their way home because they feel lost in this competitive society. 

      The Ruby Slippers are a part of one of the most famous movies in the world. For many people who do not have strong family ties or who feel alone, the characters in movies become like family to them. For many people, watching the Wizard of Oz or any of the thousands of movies produced by Hollywood is like a family reunion. They feel like they are visiting their family – they have gone home. The Ruby Slippers are an important part of the movie, and therefore the shoes are tangible evidence of their home and family. It bridges the gap between reality and fantasy. 

      The Ruby Slippers are a status symbol. Many of the people who came to bid on the shoes were people who were famous. They wanted the shoes for their status symbol. The slippers are famous and therefore anyone who won the auction on the shoes would be famous as well. 

The auctioneers are the gods. At least they think they are. They play the bidders like puppets, pulling the strings, they assign pain and torture the bidders with their lack of emotion while they whip the emotions of the bidders into a frenzy. 

');">

      In America, they say that everyone has a price. The narrator believes the price to get his lover back is the Ruby Slippers. He is so desperately in love that he will do anything for his lover. He represents the worst of America – the capitalist side – the side that thinks money is more important than people and things are more important than people. The narrator, whose exaggerations and sarcasm sound a lot like Rushdie. This is understandable. Rushdie wrote this story when he was in hiding because of the death threats put on his head because of his earlier book. He must have wished for Dorothy’s Ruby slippers so he could click his heels three times and go home.

      The “Gale” episode was interesting from the point of view that Americans must have thought it strange that he would be in love with his cousin. Actually, in his culture, first cousins are the most common marriage arrangement. I would expect some people to consider this wishing for the forbidden, being addicted to forbidden fruits, but actually, the cousin is not forbidden to Rushdie. It was useful in the story however, to give a reason for writing about the slippers and being at the auction. It was a literary device. 

      The Wizard of Oz is the most watched movie in the world. The Ruby Slippers are the most important factor in the movie, because it is the key to getting home – having her wishes come true. Rushdie could have written about any kind of action, but to choose the Ruby Slippers is significant, particularly since he was in hiding when he wrote the story. He reveals his own wish – he wanted to go home.