The balance

     Everything existed in the world must have two characteristics that are advantages and disadvantages, and also those change the characteristics depending on the situations.  For example, fantasy and reality are two opposite things.  Fantasy is very good thing to grow imagination.  On the other hand, reality is also good thing to know to survive in the world.  Those two things have obvious advantages.  However, other people may value different ideas as advantages and disadvantages.  So, I believe that there is no such a perfect thing which has no disadvantages.  Therefore, we should find the balance between things to find out optimal position.  Believing only one side for a long time is not good because the situation may change sometimes.  So, we should catch up the trend of things to optimize ourselves.  We should consider not only fantasy, but also reality to balance ourselves.

     Salman Rushdie is the author who wrote the story called “Harmony of the Spheres” from the novel East, West.  Eliot Crane, is “suffering from what he called ‘brainstorms’ of paranoid schizophrenia” (Rushdie 125).  Thus, he does not have balance in his mind.  This story focuses on his struggling about balancing.  The balance between fantasy and reality of Eliot is not optimal. So, “he had met a demon” (Rushdie 126).  And, he has wife, Lucy, and the best friend, Khan, who is the narrator of this story.  Khan thought that he wondered why he is in madness.  The answer from Eliot’s perspective is “a simple biochemical imbalance” (Rushdie 134).

     East, West by Rushdie explains about balancing to use, such as, Eliot.  The novel has nine stories, and three of them are talking about west stories, other three of them are talking about eastside of the world, and rest of three stories are mixture of west and east.  The title East West has two opposite words.  I bet that Rushdie wants to explain that there are two things in the world to balance itself, such as, fantasy and reality, madness and sanity, fiction and truth, disturbance and harmony, iconoclasm and iconography, satire and tragedy, and east and west.  Each one has advantages and disadvantages.  So, we need to find the optimal proportion of those to balance us better.  The story “The Harmony of the Spheres” has the word “Harmony” which means mixing together to make good thing.  Eliot, who has the madness and disturbance in his mind, wrote the book “The Harmony of the Spheres”.  I feel Rushdie’s irony. 

     In conclusion, Eliot lives in fantasy, so, has big imagination to write down interesting novel.  Seemingly, weighted in fantasy, not reality is good thing for him because he is an artist.  On the other hand, he has to survive the world, so, he must also need to perceive his reality.  The Khan’s question, “Why do we lose our minds?”(Rushdie 134) is pretty obvious.  Simply, the answer is that Eliot does not have balance between two things like fantasy and reality.  I bet that the balance between two things is Rushdie’s subject in the book.  And, I really agree with it.  After I realized the balancing between things, I found out it is very hard to do.  And, everybody has different balances.  So, we hopefully find out the optimal balance before the end of journey of our life.