Milk and Change in "the Mezzanine"

Milk and Change in the mezzanine`


Howie's analysis throughout “The Mezzanine” paints a picture of someone who is very clearly obsessed with innovation, however, there are also times when innovation is forced to battle with Howies unwillingness to change. One of the moments where Baker best displays this part of Howie's character is in the section talking about the change from using milk delivery services to buying milk from the store. I think this passage brilliantly displays the sad feeling of change we have all felt, through a very analytical character such as Howie, and shows how he responds when his emotions get the best of him.

 In chapter 6, Howie describes how the deliveries started out being three times a week with the Onondaga Dairy company, however, as time went on they dropped to just two times a week. Furthermore, milk packages from different companies started arriving each week as company after the company went out of business. The quality of the milk drops as well, with it now spoiling much faster. During this whole time despite the delivery system's failures,  a young Howie fiercely hangs on to his milk delivery, despite even admitting his admiration for the carton. In his own words “I felt superior to those who reached into the supermarket’s diary case and withdrew Sealtest products, admitting to the world in doing so that they did not have home delivery and hence were not really members of society but loners and drifters”.

Eventually, however, after being the only house on his block to still be taking delivery he is forced into switching to the newer and better system of picking milk up from the store, where Howie's disappointment is quickly replaced by embarrassment. Here he realizes that delivery services could never have lasted and that the feeble web of door-to-door delivery was bound to fail after the introduction of the carton. This response, I believe was left with a lot of purpose by Baker. While many of us would typically be felt with at least a little sad nostalgia, for Howie the effects span much further beyond this. He almost seems to feel betrayed that he put his faith in an unreliable system like that, which seems like such a fitting response for a character who cares about innovation as much as he does. Furthermore, I believe the initial feeling of superiority that he gets from being part of the delivery system is also very much like him. Howie is a character that deeply cares about the personal side of innovation, and the way that humans work to make it happen rather than the final product itself, so it makes sense that a more personal method of distribution such as delivery service would appeal to him.

This particular section was very interesting to me, as it was one of the few cases in the book where I felt we really saw Howies Character fight against a useful innovation and a belief that the reasons as to why he did are very fitting of his character, and intentionally used by Baker, to give insight into his personality.


Comments

  1. I can see why Howie would be nostalgic, but its hard to believe he would choose the old fashioned delivery service over cutting edge innovation.

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  2. This is quite the interesting way of viewing it. I don't necessarily think that he fought against the change, but that because he was younger, he watched the decline of home-delivery milk without fully being able to process its implications. He only saw the fall of a widely-used system into a newer, but possibly better system, without being able to view both sides and fully make a decision.

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  3. I think this is an interesting take on this scene. I kind of just saw it as Howie having a hard time of letting go and overanalyzing as he usually does. But I think you're right in the sense that it also goes along with the concept of innovation in the book.

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  4. I never thought of it this way but I see your idea and thinking through it now. I saw it as Howie not wanting change his way and being stuck where he was not how you saw it. I do agree and think that it is a telling of who Howie is and how he feels about innovation. He likes the small old day behaviors where humans do them instead of a machine. It does provide his personality and his thoughts which aids nicely to the book. Great post!

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