What is "Correct?"
I have a problem with Howie's interpretation of the usage of escalators.
"Your role was to advance at the normal rate you climbed stairs at home, allowing the motor to supplement, not replace, your own physical efforts. Otis, Montgomery, and Westinghouse had not meant for you to falter after a step or two on their machines and finally halt, arriving at the top later than you would had you briskly mounted a fixed, unelectrified flight" (100)
To explain my thinking, I'll start with this: I think it's not right to argue with someone on incorrect word usage, when the vast majority of people around you consistently use the word the same way. In the end, words are meant to serve people by communicating ideas from person to person. Therefore, if more people say "to who" than "to whom," which one serves people better? One is used more frequently than the other to communicate the same idea. By attacking someone for not colloquially using "to whom" when nearly everyone around you says "to who," you are serving the word, instead of having the word serve you.
Now escalators were also meant to serve people by getting them from one floor to another efficiently. If the majority of people stand still on the escalator, who cares what the creators intended? You set this helpful tool in front of people without instruction, and this is how people are using it. Are you going to tell people they are using escalators wrong? It's not even a significant difference, like hammering with the wrong side of a hammer. It's just slightly slower. The escalator serves the man, not the other way around. I do not care about earning the respect of the escalator, or its creators.
My favorite application of this argument is in the gif/gif debate, but that's a blog for another time (in short: I don't care in the slightest if the creator of the file type calls it jif, because that's just incorrect).
This idea of "correct" and "incorrect," or "faulty" and "working" shows up a lot throughout the novel, from plastic straw design to the paper used to roll dimes. Howie is obsessed with how efficiently he can perform any given task, and the order and peace it brings. When we first began reading, I started really looking forward to watching Howie's analytical mind spin when he went through some significant conflict in the book. Unfortunately, he just kept moving up the escalator for 135 pages. Oh well. Maybe my next blog will be an email to Baker asking about The Mezzanine 2.
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I agree on your view about Howie's view on escalators, I've personally never felt the need to walk up the steps on an escalator because the reason I went on the escalator is to conserve my energy, and I feel like walking would go against that reasoning for getting on the escalator in the first place.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I kept thinking that the greatest plot twist would be for the escalator to break down just as Howie reached the top. Then, armed with his great expertise on the workings of the world, Howie The Overthinking Office Man could singlehandedly fix the escalator or something. Maybe I should write The Mezzanine 2...
ReplyDeleteAnyways! I also agree with your view on Howie's escalator philosophy, although I do understand his pain just a bit. Being trapped behind people who are standing like immovable pillars of salt on an escalator when you're late for the train or something is a special type of hell. Also, I say "jif" and I do not care what others may say :)
It sounds weird to hear "to who" but that might just be me. I do agree with you on the pronunciation of gif though. I am not sure, it seems like people like to pick and choose when it suits them, whether to be proper or whether to go with vernacular. I think this applies to the escalator too, when Howie is young and in a rush, he is urging those in front of him to go faster, but when he is tired of always pushing past, he stops and is suddenly taking pity on others that are pushing past. This isn't to say that everyone should just abandon when it is "correct" to use whom, but I think that things can vary from what was initially intended and this isn't always a bad thing.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with this, when people tell you things like this then you can tell that they're doing it just for the sake of proving you wrong. Although, walking up escalators like they're stairs is something that's super satisfying because you go super fast (like the flat ones at airports).
ReplyDeleteThis is completely correct. What is important is not how something was meant to be used, but how it is primarily used by the people who use it. If everyone used a stapler as a paper weight it wouldn't matter the original purpose. That would just be a bonus in addition to how the people use it.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with you about how it's strange to tell people if they're using an escalator correctly or not but, at the same time, I can also relate with Howie's stance. I know that when I'm in public there are certain machines that I feel people use incorrectly and it's really frustrate me to see this (hopefully this doesn't make me sound like a bad person). A small example is people putting clothes back on hangers incorrectly or simply placing them down next to the rack when they obviously remember taking it off a hanger just seconds ago. While I never say anything about it, these small acts still annoy me because I feel they're simply wrong. Another example that we can all probably say frustrates us is people who wear their masks under their noses (I don't think I need to explain my frustration about this). While the examples I gave might seem straight forward because, yes, hangers are obviously meant to be used to hang clothes and masks should be worn a certain way, I think our stances on these objects are no different than Howie's about escalators. He thinks there's a certain way to use them and that's the only proper and correct way, and this is just how I feel about masks or hangers.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with this. I have personally never felt the need to run up the escalator as it is moving, and I have felt slight annoyance towards the people who do that. It is really strange to try to tell all of society that they are using the escalator wrong. This goes to show how Howie spends his energy focusing on the minute details of life, rather than actual issues, because there are many serious issues in our society that are much worse than going up an escalator,. But through the entire book, it seems as though he never gives any actual issues any thought.
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