Objects Of Our Imagination

I remember an odd conversation I had with my father a couple years ago about relics and religious symbols. As a protestant father of a protestant family—my family had been going to the same church all my life and we were all very involved in it—I found this subject to be a bit out of place. See, my parents had always taught me that superstitious beliefs that objects could hold any power was sinful, a though provoked by the devil. But now my dad was talking about the idea of objects bringing people closer to their beliefs, such as a special crucifix or the idea of a rosary.  What his point was that, while these things might not hold any substantial importance, they can act as a catalyst to someone’s growing belief, something they can make a tangible connection with to something supernatural.

Salmon Rushdie’s “The Prophet’s Hair” addresses this idea in a very creative way. I could go on and on about it but I’ll make it as simple as possible. To be honest, I completely believe that Rushdie uses this story as a critique not of religious beliefs in relics but of the secular or non religious, view of these objects. First of all, just the mere emphasis on hair made me immediately think about the mock-epic “The Rape of the Lock,” a poem that tells a tall tale about a lock of hair that causes this great drama between this romantic couple that ends with their separation. The story is filled with epic card games and a seemingly supernatural cosmetic table. Of course these things aren’t supposed to be taken seriously, they are exaggerated to mock the importance that there are inherently given in everyday use. It’s their ridiculousness that is the joke.

“The Prophet’s Hair” is much like this because, not only is it a piece of hair that is the center of importance, but the amount of importance and power it’s assumed to posses is ridiculous and an obvious exaggeration. People die, get hurt, and even are cured of their disabilities and the way the story is told, the strand of hair is responsible for everything. It neither moves nor acts on its own accord. At one point it falls through a boy’s pocket and the boy assumes it was the hair’s will to not go where the boy wanted it to go.  As the reader, we know that we are being told this story as if the hair is supposed to be cursed and we can decide to either believe in its power or see it as Rushdie’s satirical response to such a belief. I saw it as the latter but I will also admit that Rushdie throws you around a bit and gets you wondering if the hair has power or not.

But the fact of the matter is that it does not have this power; the illusion of power is due to its perception by the moneylender’s family. The father tells his family that he “doesn’t want it for its religious value… I’m a man of the world, of this world” (44), but the day after the hair is in his possession, he becomes overtly religious and turns into a different man literally over night. So despite this man’s denial of any religious notions, the reader is told that the hair rocks this family to the core. However, the important thing to remember is that this tale is being told from the perspective of one of the moneylender’s children as she relates it to someone else, so her perception of the hair’s power helps to shape the way she tells the story.

But isn’t this also the case with people around us? For some, these relics may not carry as much importance but I know many people who hang onto “lucky charms” or a family statue of the Virgin Mary and yet they are give power because of the importance they are given by their beholders. And perhaps this extends into our everyday life and the objects we give so much importance to such as our cars or our phones that we honestly don’t know how to function without sometimes. As much as we depend on them, we almost worship them and turn them into our own holy relics.