You can't buy happiness

How many times have you heard from your friend: “I just saw the cutest shoes ever! I must have them!” There is certainly no explanation followed on why she needs those shoes so desperately. Maybe because she saw them advertised on TV or maybe her roommate has the same pair. Maybe she simply likes them so the logical conclusion will be to buy them! Even though it is probably her fifteenth pair of shoes bought during this summer, even though she will only wear them once to a bar downtown and then put them on the furthest shelf to forget about them and to have an excuse to buy a new pair. Why do we need so many shoes? Why do we need so many things, so much stuff? Why are we so obsessed with material things that we fill our closets, our houses and our hearts with junk and are proud of it? Instead of appreciating valuable things in life such as love and friendship, we worship and make a cult of material things. Instead of attempting to find happiness within ourselves we try to “buy” it. Our whole life revolves around buying more things: we go to work to earn money to buy “stuff”.  We are stuck in this vicious cycle and there is no way to get out of it. We suffocate and get sick.

Salman Rushdie, a famous contemporary writer and satirist, developed this theme of blind consumerism and human obsession with material things in his short story “At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers.” Rushdie in this story was able to depict the extent to which our whole society is incredibly preoccupied with materialistic values and has only one goal – to buy.  From the very beginning when the author describes the auction room in which the precious ruby slippers are going to be auctioned, we notice that the bidders who in this story represent the core of our entire society are physically and mentally sick with their passion for material objects. Not only have the Auctioneers placed “extra-large bronze cuspidors” in the vestibules and toilets of the auction hall to be used by “the physically sick” bidders, but also “teams of psychiatrists of varying disciplines have been installed in ….confessional booths” to counsel the ones that are “sick at heart” (87). In addition, the Auctioneers have invited priests that will help during the auction to deal with “any psychic fall-out” and “any insanity overspill” (87).The author here emphasizes that material things are the root of all evil that causes the sickness in our society and leads to human’s physical and mental degradation. Our society has gone mad with the idea that material things can bring us happiness, but in reality they are like drugs that just numb our consciousness, make us feel “high” temporarily and cause terrible withdrawals in the morning.  

The author also illustrates that the lust for material things corrupts people’s hearts and minds and turns them into “animals.” People literally “drool” like beasts when they see “the shrine” with ruby slippers (90). Large “pools of saliva” is formed around the shrine as people’s brains simply stop functioning and only “animal-like” instincts prevail (90). People lose their common sense and the general concepts of life under the spell of the materialism. They dehumanize. This brutal drug makes our brain freeze. The moral values in our lives are substituted with the “material” ones. Instead of appreciating such ethical values as love, honesty, loyalty and friendship, people in Rushdie’s story is expressing love to the “thing” - ruby slippers - instead of their loved ones or friends. The author here ridicules our profound addiction to “things”; our souls have become so tainted that we have forgotten how to show affection to human beings as we can only love material “objects.”  A bright example of it is a scene where one of the bidders, who can’t contain her passion for the magic shoes, starts kissing the transparent cage where the slippers are located.  The security system automatically “pumps a hundred thousand volts of electricity” into the lips of the “glass- kisser” causing her immediate death (88-89).  In this world people think that “stuff” can bring them satisfaction, but instead they fill their lives with emptiness and misery.   

This crazy passion for material objects is common to all the members of our society. Rushdie describes different people who have come to the auction making it easier for us to identify ourselves with anyone of those bidders. They are political refugees (conspirators, defeated poets), exiles, homeless, behaviorist philosophers, quantum scientists, movie stars, memorabilia junkies, religious fundamentalists and orphans. All these people from different levels of various social classes have gathered here to bid on shoes.  They are not ordinary shoes; ruby slippers are believed to have magic power to take people “home”. They are supposed to solve all their problems and make their life happier. But they won’t. Here is where the vicious cycle starts again. People who think that “material things” can alleviate their stress and make their life easier are still obviously under the magic spell of the slippers.  Rushdie again here illustrates that you can’t just “buy” happiness like we buy “stuff,” the purchase of the ruby slippers can’t necessarily guarantee contentment. That is why when the narrator of the story suddenly drops out of the bidding and decides to go home, the next morning he wakes up “refreshed and free” (102). He was able to break the chains of this vicious cycle and liberate his heart from the “materialistic” virus. This proves that only when you empty your heart of all the evil brought by “materialism” you are able to experience true happiness in life.  

Consumerism is a great part of our modern life, but you can never find happiness in material objects as it lies within ourselves. Possessions only provide temporary contentment and can never substitute the real meaning of life as Richard Wagner once said : “Joy is not in things; it is in us.”