Analyse of the Egg

Analyse of The EGG

In The Egg is written by Sherwood Anderson, where the themes: American Dream, happiness, success and failure.

The narrator in the short story is an unknown narrator who has flashbacks about his past and is looking back at his back at a phase in his life, when he was 10 years old. In the first paragraph of the short story the narrator points and tells “Something happened to the two people” where he is talking about his parents, the fact that they became ambitious about life and that they wanted to achieve success.

It was the American ambitiousness that got to them. Where they started to focus on life and possibilities. This refers to the American dream → The narrator´s father seems to fail in life after he decided to leave his job on a chicken farm. I believe that Sherwood Anderson would like to tell through the short story that majority of the individuals that believed in the American Dream seems to strive to hard to able to achieve success in their lives.

The setting of the short story is in Ohio, America – 1920´s

The egg in the short story is symbolically relevant and important as they may be associating the brittleness and fragility of the egg, and also the delicacy that comes with the pursuit of the American Dream. As easily an egg can be broken, that easy can an individual broke because of The American dream was not a success. As the narrator´s father became broke as he was unable to achieve the true meaning of American dream. The egg symbolises the American Dream – positive or negative. In the paragraph on Page 1, line 24 and 25 it says “I am a gloomy man inclined to see the darker side of life, I attribute it to the fact that what should have been for me the happy joyous days of childhood were spent on a chicken farm.”

Sherwood Anderson might like to explore the themes: happiness and failure. The narrator´s father set up a chicken farm and seemed to be a happy and successful man. After his wife´s initiation he becomes ambitious and starts to become an unhappy man.  Where he realises later that he was a happier man before he chased the American Dream. The message of the short story might be that everyone cannot chase the American Dream.

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