The ruby slippers are behind bullet-proof glass. There are movie stars in the saleroom. Each of them has an aura, which has been engineered by masters of Applied Psychics. The auras reflect the roles that the actors specialise in. One of them kisses the cage with the ruby slippers and gets an electric shock. The partner of the first victim follows in her footstep. In the saleroom, there is a fancy dress party with Wizards, Lions, Scarecrows, and Totos. Not many Tin Men showed up, because the costume is particularly uncomfortable.
Some Totos are copulating, and the janitor has to intervene. The narrator observes that nowadays the public is easily offended and that it is easy to claim the high moral ground. Pools of saliva are forming around the ruby slippers. The Latino janitor cleans up after drooling people. Behaviourist philosophers and quantum scientists have come to take advantage of this rare opportunity to experience the truly miraculous.
All kinds of people gather around the ruby slippers: exiles, displaced people, the homeless. People have to brave the danger and violence of the outside world for a glimpse of the miraculous shoes. SWAT teams are summoned to deal with the homeless, who enjoy the food. The homeless are beaten and eventually they are going to be driven out of the city:.
Political refugees, conspirators, deposed monarchs, defeated factions, poets, and bandit chieftains are at the auction.
Women wear luscious attire depicting great works of art, which, however, fails to eclipse the ruby slippers. Groups of antagonistic political refugees attack each other. People in the saleroom worship the ruby slippers, because they believe that the shoes can protect them from the witches.
Some religious fundamentalists criticise the worship of the ruby slippers. They want to buy the ruby slippers to destroy them. The liberal faction of the Auctioneers would allow this, as they only care about the money. Orphans arrive, because they hope that the ruby slippers can reunite them with their dead parents. The saleroom is populated with social outcasts. The narrator observes that the concept of home has become problematic.
The narrator starts doubting that the ruby slippers could restore an uncomplicated meaning of home. There are imaginary beings in the saleroom: children from nineteenth-century Australian paintings, literary characters, aliens. The narrator expresses his views on immigration in the following way:. This permeation of the real world by the fictional is a symptom of the moral decay of our post-millennial culture. Heroes step down off cinema screens and marry members of the audience. Will there be no end to it?
Should there be more rigorous controls? According to him, most people are against the free migration of fictional characters, because they are a strain on already scarce resources in the real world. The narrator then talks about his cousin Gale, whom he considers the love of his life. She used to moan loudly during love making, which would arouse the narrator, especially when she shouted:. One day, the narrator found out that Gale was having an affair with an escapee from a caveman film.
The narrator has been bitter ever since and has been spreading gossip about Gale. The narrator never stopped reminiscing about Gale, which led him to create a fictional version of her. One time, the narrator saw Gale in a bar. Gale was watching a TV programme about an astronaut who was hopelessly stranded on Mars. As already mentioned, in the story the narrator questions the philosophy of the liberal world. Religion is mentioned only once in the film […].
Apart from this […] the film is breezily godless. There is not a trace of religion in Oz itself; bad witches are feared, good ones liked, but none are sanctified; and while the Wizard of Oz is thought to be something very close to all-powerful, nobody thinks to worship him. The plurality of the identities of such writers who straddle at least two cultures dismantle myths of homogeneous identity and national cultures. According to Rushdie, their geographical displacement provides them the fertile ground of ambiguity and multiple perspectives for writing fiction.
Like in his novels, even in this story Rushdie explores the anxieties of a culturally displaced migrant and the strategies adopted for survival between cultures.
In a persuasive demand for freedom and tolerance for people who cross frontiers, Rushdie raises issues such as:. Will we give the enemy the satisfaction of changing ourselves into something like the hate-filled, illiberal mirror-image, or will we, as the guardians of the modern world, as the custodians of freedom and the occupants of the privileged lands of plenty, go on trying to increase freedom and decrease injustice?
Will we become the suits of armour our fear makes us put on, or will we continue to be ourselves? The frontier both shapes our character and tests our mettle.
I hope we pass the test. SATL Like Dorothy who wakes up from her dream at the end of the movie, the reader is left in doubt whether the entire episode of the auction was a dream, an illusion.
Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: Minneapolis UP, Appiah, Kwame Anthony. The Ethics of Identity. Princeton: Princeton UP, Chambers, Ian. Migrancy, Culture, Identity. London: Routledge, Karen Newman et al. New York: Routledge, Lessing, Doris. The Making of the Representative for Planet 8. London: Jonathan Cape, Nietzsche, Friedrich. Daniel Breazeale. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, Rushdie, Salman.
London: Vintage, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism London: Granta Books, Soren, Frank. New York: Palgrave, Site map — Syndication. Privacy Policy — About Cookies. Rich men do not want to share the wealth with others.
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