SOURCE: "Alienation and Isolation in Nelson Algren's 'A Bottle of Milk for Mother'," in English Journal, Vol. 60, No. 6, September, 1971, pp. 724-27.

[In the following essay, Silkowski discusses themes of identity and isolation in "A Bottle of Milk for Mother, "focusing on how to make the story meaningful to students.]

Sue came to school each day in a canary yellow Mustang; Leslie wore clothes right out of the pages of a fashion magazine; Gary wanted to be sure I had filled out his recommendation for Yale.

Our next short story was to be Nelson Algren's "A Bottle of Milk for Mother." I had spent part of my childhood in the areas described by Lefty Bicek. I was moved by my recollections of those neighborhoods. My problem, however, was not only how to convey the appreciation of realistic detail, but also how to make the theme of the story relevant to my class of fairly well-to-do suburban students.

I relied on the fact that, having lived in the area, I could personally attest to the accuracy of some of Algren's comments and descriptions. Happily, as we worked through the story, my class and I discovered that the themes of identity and isolation were, like all good themes, universally applicable, and not at all peculiar to the setting in which Algren presented them.

Two months after the Polish Warriors S.A.C. had had their heads shaved, Bruno Lefty Bicek got into his first difficulty with the Racine Street police. The arresting officers and a reporter from the Dziennik Chicagoski were grouped about the captain's desk when the boy was urged forward into the room by Sergeant Adamovitch. . . .

Thus, in his first "difficulty," Lefty finds himself under the scrutiny of the watchdog of public morality (the reporter) and the guardian of public morality (the police). The first conversation between Lefty and Captain Kozak reveals that certain attitudes and conflicts are already existent.

"Let the jackroller tell us how he done it hisself."

"I ain't no jackroller."

". . . you one of them Chicago Av'noo moll-buzzers?"

"I ain't that neither."

"C'mon, c'mon, I seen you in here before—what were you up to, followin' that poor old man?"

"I ain't been in here before."

The captain's opening remarks reveal that he already has a predisposition about Lefty; his impartiality is as faulty as his grammar. The captain knows Lefty; he speaks to him at his own level, in his own terms. But Lefty will not accept the categories which the captain tries to impose upon him; Lefty is neither a "jackroller" nor a "moll-buzzer."

Kozak's next words, "What were you doin' on Chicago Av'noo in the first place when you live up around Division? Ain't your own ward big enough you have to come down here to get in trouble," try to place Lefty geographically, and carry with them the implication that Lefty does not belong here in the Racine Street district. He is thus an intruder, an outsider.

Lefty's defense, "I was just walkin' down Chicago like I said to get a bottle of milk for Mother, when the officers jumped me," has two objectives: first, he offers a plausible excuse for being out of his territory, and second, it puts him in the class of "good boys who do errands for their mothers."

Again Kozak removes Lefty from the class of "good boys" by displaying the spring-blade knife, Lefty's own "double-edged double-jointed spring-blade cuts-all genuine Filipino twisty-handled all-American gut-ripper." Breaking the five-inch blade, Kozak says, "C'mon, Lefty, tell us about it. 'N it better be good."

The boy began slowly, secretly gratified that Kozak appeared to know he was the Warriors' first-string left-hander: maybe he'd been out at that game against the Knothole Wonders the Sunday he'd finished his own game and then had relieved Dropkick Kodadek in the sixth in the second. Why hadn't anyone called him "Iron-Man Bicek" or "Fire-ball Bruno" for that one?

"Iron-Man Bicek," "Fire-ball Bruno": those were names a talent scout or college coach could conjure with. Why hadn't Dziennik Chicagoski sent a reporter out to cover that one?

Kozak's admonitions about Lefty's rights, "Everythin' you say can be used against you," and "Don't talk unless you want to," are warnings given to any member of our society, but his threat to hold Lefty on an open charge until he does talk at once removes Lefty from the common citizenry. Perhaps aware of the implications of that threat, Lefty begins his explanation, describing how he followed the man "just to break the old monotony. Just a notion, you might say. . . . "

Then comes the first of many comments by Lefty, all indicative of his awareness of alienation. "I'm just a neighborhood kid, Captain." Here is Lefty's attempt to place himself back into a sphere where he will be recognized.

When Kozak says nothing, Lefty continues his narrative, going to another tack. "Has the alderman been in to straighten this out, Captain?" Of course, he wants to imply that anyone who is "just a neighborhood kid" is known in his own community, has friends who will come to his aid.

Commenting on the old man he followed, Lefty points out, with some scorn, that "he was a old guy, a dino you. He couldn't speak a word of English." If anyone were the outsider, the foreigner, it was the old man. Again Lefty seeks to establish his own identity at the expense of the old man: "I don't like to see no full grown man drinkin' that way. A Polak hillbilly he was, 'n certain'y no citizen."

Even when describing how difficult it was for him to get the money from the old man, Lefty inserts the comment, "I'm just a neighborhood fella." Whatever advantage Lefty had hoped to gain from these references to neighborhood and friends is negated by the admission that he did fire the pistol.

"I didn't really fire, though. Just at his feet. T' scare him so's he wouldn't jump me. I fired in self-defense. I just wanted to get out of there. . . . You do crazy things sometimes, fellas—well, that's all I was doin'."

Perhaps realizing that his crime, as all crimes, has already separated him from the community at large, Lefty "added aloud, before he could stop himself: "'N beside I had to show him—"

"Show him what, Left-hander?"

"That I wasn't just another greenhorn sprout like he thought."

And further: "Lot of people think I'm just a green kid. I showed 'em. I guess I showed 'em now all right."

Yet he immediately tries to reestablish his image.

"I'm just a neighborhood kid. I belonged to the Keep-Our-City-Clean Club at St. John Cant'us. I told him polite-like, like a Polish-American citizen, this was Chiney-Eye-a-Friend-of-Mine's hallway."

To no avail. Kozak informs Lefty that the old man was killed. And just as Lefty had changed the conversation before, Kozak now inquires about some of Lefty's friends, bringing up the topic of boxers at the local arena, the City Gardens. As with the baseball game, Lefty warms enthusiastically to the topic, happy that Kozak seems to recognize something distinctive about Lefty. But Kozak is merely doing his job, gathering all the information he can about the robbery, even about Lefty's shaved head.

Once again Lefty tries to turn this fact to his favor, relating how the first haircut led to others, eventually to the formation of the Baldhead S.A.C. "They thought it was a club you." As with any club, unity, solidarity, and identity are established. "So that's why we changed our name then, that's why we're not the Warriors any more, we're the Baldhead True American Social 'n Athletic Club."

Even though Sergeant Adamovitch thinks of Lefty as a "low class Polak," Lefty is persistent in his attempt to establish his identity and be a typical useful member of society.

"That's why I want to get out of this jam. So's it don't ruin my career in the rope arena. I'm goin' straight. This has sure been one good lesson fer me. Now I'll go to a big-ten collitch 'n make good you."

But Kozak once more removes Lefty from that society. "What do you think we ought to do with a man like you, Bicek?" Lefty catches the shift in meaning: not a "neighborhood boy" who might be in some minor trouble for doing something "crazy," but a "man" who has committed murder and thereby alienated himself from society. He tries not to let the threat of a long term at the local reformatory upset him. He says:

"I wouldn't wait that long. Hungry Piontek-from-by-the-Warehouse you, he lammed twice from that St. Charles farm. 'N Hungry don't have all his marbles even. He ain't even a citizen."

And once again Lefty's reference to his friendship with the alderman is an attempt to be identified with the community.

Of course, all these attempts are useless.

"I don't want to tell you anything." His mind was setting hard now, against them all. Against them all in here and all like them outside. And the harder it set, the more things seemed to be all right with Kozak. . . .

Lefty tries once more to fit in.

"I ain't mad, Captain. I don't blame you men either. It's your job, it's your bread 'n butter to talk tough to us neighborhood fellas. . . ." But Kozak was studying the charge sheet as though Bruno Lefty Bicek were no longer in the room. Nor anywhere at all.

"I'm still here," the boy said wryly. . . .

[Kozak's] glance went past the boy and no light of recognition came into his eyes.

"Don't look at me like I ain't nowheres. I was born in this country. I'm educated here—."

But no one was listening to Bruno Lefty Bicek any more.

The last scene, Lefty in his cell, shows how far the alienation, rejection, and isolation have gone. In the gloom, Sergeant Adamovitch sees Lefty pause and go down on his knees.

"This place'll rot down 'n mold over before Lefty Bicek starts prayin', boobatch. Prays, squeals, 'r bawls. So run along 'n I'll see you in hell with yer back broke. I'm lookin' for my cap I dropped is all."

This is Lefty's last significant act. Alienated from his society, he tries to salvage at least some shred of his identity by an act of defiance, an utterance against the society that has so effectively shut him out. Even this act is a failure.

[Adamovitch] did not stay to see the boy, still on his knees, put his hands across his mouth and stare at the shadowed wall.

Shadows were there within shadows.

"I knew I'd never get to be twenty-one anyhow," Lefty told himself softly at last.