The Harmony of Madness

            While reading Salman Rushdie’s short story, “The Harmony of the Spheres” I kept asking my self, what is madness?  Is it a disease, chemical imbalance or mental illness? Is it an illusion that a person creates? Is it caused by influences in a person’s life or environment? All of these questions kept jumping around in my mind while I was reading about Eliot Crane’s madness.  After reading the short story I came to the conclusion that madness is caused by numerous factors, both mental and physical.

            Eliot Crane is this brilliant man that has lost his mind and sense of harmony, but at the same time is aware of his condition. On the first page the reader learns that Eliot, “had been suffering from what he called, ‘brainstorms’ of paranoid schizophrenia” (125). Eliot himself even believes his madness is caused by, “A simple biochemical imbalance” (135). Eliot very well might have some sort of mental condition or illness, but his work had a lot to do with him losing a sense of balance and sanity.

            Eliot Crane was a very brilliant and scholarly man.  His main interests seem to be in black magic and primitive rituals and societies. He became so intertwined with these primitive arts and societies that he started losing touch of reality and ultimately his mind. For example the narrator Khan says, “I know that the seductive arcane which drove Eliot Crane out of his mind almost ensnared me as well… From Eliot I learned the secrets of the Great Pyramids, the mysteries of the Golden Section and the intricacies of the Spiral.  He told me about Mesmer’s theory of Animal Magnetism” (137).  Eliot was obsessed with these ancient teaching so much that he started losing his sense of balance and harmony.  Eliot did seem to be a very influential person in the narrator Khan’s life, almost like a mentor.  Even Khan admits that Eliot’s passion almost took him over as well.

            From Eliot and his madness Khan learns a lot about himself. For example Khan says, “When I first met Eliot I was a little unhinged myself- suffering from a disharmony of my personal spheres. There was the Laura episode, and beyond it a number of difficult questions about home and identity that I had know idea how to answer” (139). The relationship was seemed pretty dysfunctional between Eliot and Khan but they learned a great deal about each other and themselves through it.

            It is kind of ironic that both men seem to end up having these kinds of tragic endings. Eliot’s madness eventually gets the best of him and he blows his head off, with ironically the same shotgun his father committed suicide with.  Through Eliot’s death, Khan comes to realize that his wife Mala was having an affair with Eliot.  Eliot and Khan lost their sense of harmony but do it in different ways.  But in the end it ultimately contributes to both men’s downfall.