Balancing our World

Defining reality and fiction is something that we do in our everyday lives. Those of us that can balance these two opposites the most effectively find equilibrium in our existence.  Attaining perfect balance is impossible due to the constant shifts and events that take place, but constant effort to balance the forces of fiction/non-fiction, good/evil, right/wrong etcetera can lead to a sense of comfort. We all strive for balance and harmony in our lives, but when we become too imbalanced we enter a new dimension and this can become harmful.

                In Salman Rushdie’s short story “Harmony of the Spheres” from the novel East West, Rushdie examines this imbalance through the madness of his character Eliot Crane. “Harmony of the Spheres” is narrated by a close friend of Eliot’s (Khan); he watches Eliot’s descent into a life of insanity and imbalance. Eliot’s own genious becomes his worst enemy, “suffering from what he called ‘brainstorms,’ of paranoid schizophrenia” (125). Initially Eliot comes off as a normal person to anyone he may encounter, but he has constant episodes of hearing sounds, voices, and sometimes feels a presence of evil that other people cannot sense. The narrator Khan attempts to justify and explain Eliot’s psychotic behavior by telling of his interest in the dark arts and association as an occultist. Khan believes that there is a method to Eliot’s madness behind the schizophrenic episodes and odd behavior. He believes that Eliot is brilliant during his moments of balance and clarity. This gray area between genius and insanity has become a common theme in Rushdie’s writing, and the story about Eliot is no exception. Rushdie investigates the possibility of genius and insanity going hand in hand, and too much intelligence may cause an imbalance within the brain. Constant inspiration and thoughts jumbling within the mind may be the cause of brilliant people going insane, due to their inability to control their thoughts. It seems Eliot became too smart for his own good, “I never had much time for gurus back home where the word came from, but that’s what Eliot was, I confess with a blush” (138). Eliot’s thoughts caused an imbalance in his mind and he lost his sense of reality, resulting in madness.

            After dealing with a mental imbalance Eliot gives in to his demons by committing suicide. The voices, thoughts, and senses that Eliot experienced influenced his life to an extreme extent. This shows the impact words and opinions can have on a person’s mental well being. A world without harmony will drive a person mad because they have no way to balance the environment around them. Eliot’s association with the Occult and Dark Arts imbalanced his thoughts and Rushdie illustrates how people must be able to filter their thoughts in order to stay “balanced”. Rushdie’s goals in “Harmony of the Spheres” is to explain to the reader that we must be aware of how much information we take in, decipher the good and bad, and surround ourselves with positive thought. Attaining harmony globally cannot be achieved through institutions; it has to be done on an individual level, and this is proven time and again throughout history with our attempt to find collective harmony as a group, not as individuals. The goal is to find out what is important to us as individuals and stay positive. This may not achieve perfect harmony in society but it will be a starting point.