Objects

Do you remember being read to? How about those old fables that had a “moral of the story”? It’s interesting to look back at all the different stories we have heard as kids. There were so many that actually meant so much more than we thought! Oh, to be young again and take life at face value! As we grow up, however, instead of reading the ‘moral of the story’ we find meaning in satires. In my opinion, satires are just adult versions of fairy tales or fables. They are usually poking fun at someone, something, a belief, or really anything in order to gain peoples attention to that and try to sway its readers to think a different way. Some can be very offensive to certain people, but in reality, I think it’s all in good fun.

Salmon Rushdie, a famous and infamous satirist, has written numerous books and short stories satirizing on some very controversial and “touchy” subjects. In his book of short stories called “East, West,” Rushdie reveals feelings about different parts of the world (hence East, West) by satirizing things from Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers to Christopher Columbus. In the story he titles “The Prophet’s Hair,” the amount of different “things” being satirized is up to the individual reader him/herself. When I read it I felt like he was focusing on our obsession with objects and their importance in life; more specifically religious objects. Why is it that some people put so much value and significance in a ‘thing?’

In “The Prophets Hair,” Hashim, the moneylender, a very wealthy man, married with a boy and a girl, “the moneylender and his wife had successfully sought to inculcate the virtues of thrift..” (p 42). He seemed to be a pretty happy and successful man, but “that life of porcelain delicacy and alabaster sensibilities, was to be shattered..” (p 42). Hashim discovered a small vial one morning and decided to pick it up “to was a cylinder of tinted glass cased in exquisitely wrought silver, and Hashim say within is walls a sliver pendant bearing a single strand of human hair” (p 24). He collected the vial and took it home and discovered that “he was in possession of the famous relic of the Prophet Muhammad” (p 43). Instead of taking the very important and famous object to the shrine for all to see, the moneylender harbored the hair amongst his numerous collected treasures. This relic was much to legendary for anyone else to see, “the Prophet would have disapproved mightily of this relic-worship….So by keeping this from…devotees…I perform a finer service than I would by returning it” (p 44). He has convinced himself that he is the only one that should see and possess this object and it takes over him.

He decides that “there’s going to be some discipline around here” (p 48), and becomes a very serious religious man. Hashim had told his son about his discovery but makes him promise not to tell anyone. Atta (his son) confides in his sister because of the “state of shock and dismay” (p 47) that had come over their family. His wife “began a fit of hysterics…and her husband threatened her with divorce..”(p 47). Their family was falling apart. The seemingly powerful object that should be so magical had ruined this family. Hashim even goes as far as beating his own children because of they tried to get rid of the vial of hair. His daughter ends up hiring a thief to steal the hair from her father to see if it would bring peace back into their family, but instead all hell breaks loose. Atta actually dies after being beaten by his father, Hashim accidentally stabs his own daughter thinking it’s the thief in his room, and than kills himself. “His wife, the remaining member of the family was driven into an insane asylum. So, in the end, well, Hashims obsession with the vial not only killed himself but his family as well.

It’s interesting to think about other objects in life that people think are so powerful. Some rely on a rosary to keep them safe or a cross around their neck as a symbol of Christ. Do they really “work”? I think that Rushdie is trying to brings us back down to earth and remind us that well, objects or things really don’t have too much power and that if taken too seriously, well, you just might die. J I don’t think that there is any way a person can really find any sort of peace or comfort in an object and that’s what Rushdie is trying to communicate to us in a very sly but sophisticated way.