The Glass of Milk

In “The Glass of Milk” (1927) by Manuel Rojas, ideas of pride, shame, humiliation, desperation, integrity, innocence, and honesty intertwine and are explored. The third-person narrator tells the story of an unnamed young man suffering the consequences of poverty. This story, one of Rojas’s most famous works of fiction, is featured in Men of the South (1927), a collection of short stories exploring similar themes. This series of short stories further affirmed Rojas’s place as one of the most innovative 20th-century Chilean writers. In his work, Rojas regularly ruminated on the impoverished condition of the working or lower classes through an autobiographical lens. This perspective was informed by his experience working as an unskilled laborer across the mountainous coast of Chile and Argentina.

This guide refers to the version of the text that is available on the Latin American Literature Today website, featuring a free translation of the text by Rosa María Lazo and Pablo Saavedra Silva, edited by María José Navia.

The story begins with a description of an unnamed sailor aboard a vessel, who seems to be waiting for someone. The protagonist, an unnamed young man, is walking across this unspecified port and appears pitiful to the sailor, who offers him his leftover food. The young man declines and hurries away, feeling “shyness and shame, rather than pride” (Paragraph 18). The young man reflects that he hasn’t eaten in three days, and while he had hoped someone would offer him food, he could not accept it when they finally did. As he leaves, a “vagabond” eagerly accepts the sailor’s offer without so much as an expression of gratitude before consuming the meal.

Before reaching this port, the young man worked as a cabin boy aboard a British ship and on another assisting an “Austrian crab fisherman” (Paragraph 19). In Punta Arenas, a city in Chile, the young man abandoned the British ship and secretly boarded a vessel traveling north; he was caught and discharged at the present port. Following the steamer’s departure, the young man lost his only source of food, and the prospect of traversing the big city overwhelmed him: “It seemed to him a place of slavery, airless, dark, lacking the expanse of the sea, and where in between high walls and straight streets people lived and died dazed by an anguished toil” (Paragraph 21).

The next day, the young man secures work loading wheat onto a ship. Despite his optimistic disposition and dedicated work ethic, the young man becomes dizzy and unbalanced from his exhaustion and malnourishment. After doing everything he can to hide his condition from the others, he tentatively approaches the foreman to request an advance payment. He is denied and instead offered a loan of 40 cents. The young man once again denies the charitable offer and instead wanders the big city, desperate to secure a meal: “He felt hunger, hunger, hunger! A hunger that subdued him like a whipping […] 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).

The young man doubles over in pain and hallucinates, seeing his home, family, and siblings. When he recovers, he decides to steal food, though he knows he will feel ashamed when he does. If caught, he will not try to escape punishment. Soon after deciding this, the young man reaches a dairy with “a blonde lady with a very white apron behind the counter” (Paragraph 38). He impatiently observes an old man with glasses who is leisurely drinking milk and reading a newspaper, wanting him to leave.

When the old man leaves the dairy, the young man enters. His uncertainty is reflected in his mannerisms, as he first lingers by the door and then can’t decide where to sit. He settles for a seat in the corner. Shortly after, the woman from behind the counter takes his order; the young man orders a large glass of milk and some cookies. He avoids eye contact with the woman because “she would see his shameful mood and purposes, and he would have to stand up and leave, without even tasting what he had ordered” (Paragraph 58). The young man’s hunger begins to fade after biting a cookie and sipping the milk. With this, his reason returns and he realizes what he has done. The young man begins crying: “He sobbed, sobbed with grief, with anger, with a desire to weep, as if he had never done it before” (Paragraph 60).

The woman sets a hand over his head, urging him to cry without reservation. The young man is met with another wave of tears, this time with joy rather than desperation or sadness. This crying has a purifying effect on the young man, and he feels somewhat restored. After recovering, the young man glances up at the lady, but she is looking away from him, saddened by what she witnessed. He then looks downward to discover an additional serving of milk and cookies before him, which he eats patiently. The young man considers what he could say to her; when the time comes for him to leave, he simply thanks her and says goodbye. The woman replies, “Goodbye, son.”

After leaving the shop, the young man travels to the docks, “the wind coming from the sea [refreshing] his face, still burning from crying” (Paragraph 70). He reflects on his interaction with the woman from the dairy, who showed him such kindness and understanding. He considers returning to the dairy to repay her once he earns some money, but this desire fades as the memory blends with his others. After some time, exhaustion overwhelms the young man. Nonetheless, he notes, “He felt himself alive, that was it,” and he falls asleep facing the sea (Paragraph 75).