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When wanting something so bad that you can taste it, how much money or how far are you willing to go to get that possession? Is to the point that you will spend all of your money and time to obtain it? Or are you willing to give up your morals and beliefs in order to have something that you feel will change your life? In the short story “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers” in East, West by Salman Rushdie, the narrator feels that the only way he can have the feeling he once had would be to possess the ruby slippers.

The narrator is going to this auction where everything is for sale, but the most prized item is a pair of ruby slippers. Everybody from mile around, people dressed as wizards, lions, scarecrows, and tin men along with famous movie stars to orphans and tramps, have come to see if they can some how win those slippers, which they believe it will change their life. They all believe that the slippers “can make us invulnerable to witches” (Rushdie 92) and “they promised to take them home’ (Rushdie 93). These people feel that there are so many witches perusing them these days that the only way back to their happiness, “home” is by these ruby slippers. Even the narrator himself has come the bid on these slippers the try to gain back the love of his life.

The narrator is in love with his cousin Gale, but she broke up with him and he still yearns for her. He feels that if he wins these slippers that she can use them however she liked; to save the spacemen stuck on mars or give the heels three clicks and return home to him. As the bidding starts and the price continue to go higher, something happens to the narrator, “he becomes detached from earth” (Rushdie 102). The narrator relies that he does not need these slippers to take back to the way he once felt.

In today fast pace, technology era, everyone feels that material possessions make them who they are. They will acquire them at any means of doing so. It does not matter who or what had to be taken or damaged to make a certain good as long as they have it. Some will realize what damage they are causing and will change their way, but for other, change will come too late and realize the damage undoable.