The Glass of Milk

The severity of the poverty that oppresses the young man and those around him is clear in the story. The port offers little predictability regarding which vessels will offer work and for how long. Also, the young man, preferring the ocean’s openness and communal nature, must navigate a cold and isolating city. Contrary to morality tales that insist hard work will reap rewards, his experience, skills, and work ethic do not earn him a job as he cannot compete with the number of individuals fighting for limited opportunities. The capitalist system simply makes him another anonymous lower-class individual who needs money and food, a fact reinforced by the lack of character names in the story.

Many of the character descriptions reveal the difficulty this class position imposes upon these individuals. The protagonist is described as “a young, slim man” who wanders the port “with his hands in his pockets, distracted or lost in thought” (Paragraph 2). His defeated posture contrasts with the typical expectations of a young man. He is reduced to circumstances in this instance; he is his hunger and desperation. He is not able to display his individuality or grow as a young man; like the vagabond, his character arc centers around finding food, a basic human need. As he becomes hungrier, this characterization becomes starker: “[H]e could not moan nor yell, because his suffering was obscure and exhausting; it was not pain but a deaf anguish, a sense of ending; he felt as if he were being crushed by a big load” (Paragraph 34). Here, he is deprived of communication, an essential aspect of being human. The simile comparing his anguish to a “big load” likens him to a pack animal, like a mule. In short, poverty reduces the young man to his most basic state, a creature only capable of survival.

These ideas also speak to Rojas’s concerns with anarchism, a philosophy that believes capitalism reduces individuals to anonymous oppressed masses. Anarchism seeks a society free of hierarchies based on mutual cooperation. Without class oppression, individuals would be able to express themselves freely. Furthering the text’s anti-capitalist argument, Rojas emphasizes that age and experience do not bring the lower classes out of poverty, as the young man observes much older individuals suffering from the same circumstances he does.

In contrast to this dehumanization, the care and compassion the young man receives at the dairy revives him. After the young man orders his food, Rojas employs another simile: “[H]e rubbed his hands on his knees, cheerful, like a person who is cold and is about to drink something hot” (Paragraph 56). In contrast to the previous simile, this one explicitly compares him to a human, restoring some of his lost humanity. Unable to cry in his hunger, eating the first plate of cookies and milk allows the young man to cry out and weep—satiating his hunger reconnects him with his emotions. After leaving the dairy, he sings—a more sophisticated form of expression—and “feel[s] as if he were being made again, feel[s] his past energies, which had been scattered, com[e] together and solidly blending” (Paragraphs 72-73). By the end of the story, he is temporarily restored to his fully human self, though his fatigue asserts that this is only a temporary salve from a brutal, dehumanizing system.

Creating complex characters to illustrate the plight of poverty is a common component in many of Rojas’s narratives. His novel Hijo de Ladrón, or Born Guilty, published in 1951, tells the story of Aniceto Hevia. As indicated by the title, Aniceto is the son of a thief and has thus inherited the dishonor and guilt that comes with such an association. Like Rojas, Aniceto is born in Buenos Aires before moving to Chile. Unlike the young man in “The Glass of Milk,” Aniceto has a well-off childhood thanks to his father. When Aniceto’s father is arrested and his mother dies, Aniceto is unable to acquire work due to his lack of proper documentation or skills. The ostensibly dishonorable legacy of his father follows him, and Rojas suggests that one can only climb out of poverty through theft. He points to the irony in lower-class individuals, such as the young man in “The Glass of Milk,” believing it is wrong to steal when capitalist immorality impoverished him in the first place. The rich themselves have no qualms about exploiting and stealing from the lower classes, and they have created a system in which it is only possible by stealing. The lady at the dairy provides a counterpoint to this social system, in which care is provided freely.