小说 the egg鸡蛋

英美小说要素解析

指导老师：

2013.1.1

An analysis of “The Egg”

"The Egg", taken from "The Triumph of the Egg", one of Sherwood Anderson's well-known short stories, is a humorous fiction about a farmer who became infected with the American passion for "success" and started to pursue wealth and social position.However, he failed though he made several attempt. This paper tries to analyze the use of the egg as a symbol, the point of view and theme.

“The egg ”which used throughout the story symbols three different things. First,“the egg” symbols th e American dream of the father. This story is from Sherwood Anderson's "The Triumph of the Egg", which was published in 1920s when America was experiencing a whole nation transformation from agricultural country into industrial country . At that time, almost the entire nation started the dream of gold rush, pursuing fortune. This man who encouraged by his wife after marrying a country schoolteacher got ambitious. After that, he started his journey of American dream. His first venture of chicken raising turned out badly. Although father made his great effort, chickens became sick and died, which meant the disillusionment of his dream. Second, various monstrous chickens symbols fathers’twisted psychological. Father preserved those grotesques in alchohol and place bottles that chickens was put in on a shelfback of the counter. This behavior indicated that father’ American dream became twisted. Third, the egg symbols cruel reality. Chickens come out of eggs, but they probably born malformed and they can get sick. This equals people who run into obstacles, like the father made his attempt but still could not survive misfortune.

The point of view of this artical is the narrrator--the son. It is inevitable that a child’s descpription must be more than the fact.As the narrator wrote：“For some explainable reason I know the story as well as though I had been a witness to my father’s discomfiture.”The narrator did not witness what happened actually, he imaged the part he did not know. This also made the story more real like someone

was telling you about his family story face to face. Furthermore, this point of view began shift at this point for the purpose of flexibly showing different thoughts of father and Joe kane to strenthen the effect of this funny, tragic and hopeless story. What’s more,the humor of narrator brings people a feeling of relax. “I,however, digress”,“I exaggerated a little”, these words shorten the distance between the writer and the reader and give readers more space to think themselves. Besides, this helps figure the son character. Furthermore, narrator’s rhythm of the description controls the structure of story. The narrator uses few words to picture his fathers’ first thirty years. While he uses a number of words to picture the night--the climax.

Catabolization is a common theme in modern literature.Because of the coming of industrial age, people can not adjust to the great change from agricultural age, which resulted in catabolization of people.This is exactly what sherwood wanted to show through “The egg”. D riven by American dream, the father made his every attempt. However, various difficulties discouraged his determination and confidence. And gradually, the father became psychologically twist, which is what I mentioned above—catabolization. The pursuit for money is not the best choice, it is the combination of mental and physical aspects that contributes to the real success. In addition, the deceit and falsity of American dream is the other theme of this artical. Chicken eats quantities of corn and meal bou ght by the sweat of the father’s brow but gets diseases; restaurant business gets no great success though the couple work hard; father can not achieve customers’ recognition through his performance. This failure of his performance means his failure of American dream, breaking his hope and illusions. All these disclose that it is difficult to get rid of poverty and low status through hard work in the money-mad metropolis.

Sherwood Anderson tells people the value of life and the essence of things through this story. It reveals social crisis that people are meeting with. The author also shows his sympathy for them and his sadness for people who only pursuit money while ignore the rich of mental. The abundant symbolic meanings and unique point of view in the story make it among the classics of American short fiction. It deserves readers deep thought and research.