Ephemerality
In the Mezzanine, the passage Howie reads from his Penguin classic describes life as trivial or ephemeral. The word ephemeral in French is “éphémère”. In the book Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince), this word is used to describe flowers. The Little Prince visits the planet of a geographer. The geographer asks the Little Prince to describe his planet for his geography book. When the Little Prince describes his home, he mentions his rose. The geographer says that he doesn’t write about flowers because they are ephemeral. The Little Prince asks what this means, and the geography says it means that his flower is won’t last forever, that his flower is going to disappear. This upsets the Little Prince because he realizes that his flower is going to disappear, and he left her all alone. Later on, he is on Earth and comes upon a garden of roses. He realizes that his rose isn't unique. This makes him sad because he thought his rose was important, but because she’s just an ordinary rose, then he’s not really a great prince if that’s all he has.
Both the Little Prince and Howie are bothered when it is brought to their attention that life is trivial. They’re both upset by the idea that they are unimportant. Life is ephemeral but both of them disagree. The Little Prince later on realizes that his rose is in fact important even if she will disappear, even if she isn’t unique. His rose is important because she is his rose. Howie shows how the little, seemingly trivial, things in life are important through his book. He shows that you can write a book that focuses on everyday things and make it interesting. The Little Prince shows that a person is important, because even if you don’t seem unique you actually are because you are you and no one else is. Howie shows that everything you do and think is important, because even if what you do seems mundane, it can be really fascinating if you look at it in a new way.
When faced with the ephemerality of life, they are upset at first, but they show you that life is important. Howie defamiliarizes everyday things to show you how the simplest of things are interesting. The Little shows you that you’re unique. So, if you are interesting and unique, then how can your life be trivial? Both characters try to tell the reader that even though life is ephemeral, your life is important even if you only have a rose and even if you just have a job on the mezzanine.
I like this a lot. I like to think that Howie seeks to prove that your life can be fleeting and still have meaning- life is be transient, so the only thing that matters is that you enjoyed it. So many of life's experiences are universal, and even the most simple things are so interesting as a result of that. The experiences we have will still exist long after we're gone.
ReplyDeleteWow, I never saw that connection with the Le Petit Prince, Claudine would be disappointed in me :( . I really liked how you analyzed how they both coped with the idea that their lives may be in the grand scheme of things trivial and unimportant. I agree with the idea that the prince is able to come to terms with the heartbreaking news that he and his rose are not unique. However, I think that Howie has a much harder time grappling with this idea since he cannot get past the first sentence of Marcus Aurelius.
ReplyDeleteOn a kind of different note:
I love your question "So, if you are interesting and unique, then how can your life be trivial?" and your response to it. To add a little I think the prince is able to accept that he is trivial and yet be interesting and unique while I think Howie's mindset leans more to an "I am interesting and unique and therefore my life cannot be trivial."
I really like this! And I agree with what you said about the whole idea behind The Mezzanine being that these small, seemingly insignificant things in life are actually really important and interesting, despite being referred to as trivial.
ReplyDeleteAlso like the connection you make between Howie's philosophy and Le Petit Prince. I never would have thought of it that way.
Your line "it can be really fascinating if you look at it in a new way" really got me thinking about Baker's point through The Mezzanine. I don't know if the theme is quite so set as that, but Baker does allude to it throughout the book. Even the "ephemeral" is worth studying - Howie, beyond even just documenting the trivial things, also documents the transient. Somewhere in those 100-some pages, he says something like "no one will remember delivered milk cartons". The statement first struck me as sad, and I thought of something around the lines of "it's the lost art of milk delivery now". Thinking about your line and this line in tandem now makes me want to apply it to other things as well, things we might not consider transient and trivial. Anthropology, in the grand scheme of things, could be considered ephemeral (culture is always changing)! What's the point of learning about U.S. politics and current computer science if it won't be around in a hundred years? It's just our vision of reality, just like Howie has his (admittedly a little different in emphasis from the rest of ours). It really does just depends on how you look at it.
ReplyDeleteI love this comparison!! It’s super interesting to see the way different people consider the idea of a meaningful life. I think in the Mezzanine, Howie is showing people that even if his life doesn’t necessarily have huge things in it, it still has meaning. In Le Petit Prince, maybe it was written more to help people to understand this meaning.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a great way to think about the Mezzanine! It's easy for us to dismiss Howie's corporate life as "boring" or "confining", but he treats his life as beautiful and important, just like the Prince's rose.
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