Literary Research Summary
In life, many people have the ambition to become successful and have a high living standard. However, in the process of the quest for success, there are many challenges and failures that demoralize a person. Someone tries a business enterprise, and it fails, then starts another, which might fail. This shows that struggling to achieve a dream cannot be avoided in life. Sherwood Anderson, The Egg is a short story that shows a family that tries to achieve what is commonly referred to in the story as the American dream and how it struggles by working hard to achieve that dream.
Sherwood Anderson, The Egg, uses the third person to help the narrator give the background information about his parents. The narrator’s father is described as a farm-hand who is not ambitious in life. The narrator says his father would go out and take beer with his fellow farm-hands at a local pub riding on his horse; the father seems not to be troubled by life in any way. The best part of the story begins in spring when the narrator is born because it is after his birth that his parents become ambitious for the first time in life. The narrator describes his parents’ sudden ambition to her mother, who is a teacher and, therefore, a reader. The narrator believes that her mother must have read about how poor people became prominent in America.
The narrator’s parent’s first attempt to succeed is when they start a chicken farm. The narrator says that the farm was rocky, which shows how life must have been hard on the farm. Life on the farm gave the narrator his first impression of life. The narrator’s parents then open a restaurant which the narrator describes as a hen born with freakish characteristics that could not survive long. In the restaurant, the father preserved freaky things and put them on display, believing that it would entertain people. The narrator says that his father believed that people liked looking at strange and wonderful things. The narrator uses his father’s trick to entertain people to show his parents’ failure. During his father’s night shift, his father tries to entertain young men and women from Birdwell. When a young man Joe Kane visits, the father, who is not a born sociable person, talks about Christopher Columbus make Joe believe that he had no respect for the American historical figure. After some time, Joe attempts to leave despite the rain, but the father is able to convince him to stay. The father uses an egg in order to entertain his guests, which takes longer. This shows how much the father was inclined to become successful.
The theme of ambition, failure, and happiness appear in the story. The narrator says that something happened to his parents after his birth, where they became ambitious. The narrator says that his parents might have followed the American dream to rise up to the world. The father became unhappy due to his failures. He seemed a happy man before marriage, where he would take several glasses of beer. This shows that personal happiness and following a dream were not compatible.
The author observes how Anderson has perfected at the act of storytelling by providing an unambiguous tale. According to the author, Anderson begins by attracting the attention of the audience by sharing the narrators in a way that requires the reader to think more. The words used by Anderson different from the words in the narrator’s story and this makes the text complicated. Although the narrator is trying to explain his self-consciousness of the guilt, he assumed over something that happened when he was born, “The Egg” does not reveal the narrator’s feelings but it is simply a story of self-conscious guilt. Other than focusing on how the narrator regrets being born to that father, the story covers his guilt with humor and tries to reveal how he resembled his father.
Although it is evident how the narrator and his father had an intense and awkward relationship, Anderson does not focus on explaining it. Most of the attention is directed to how they have similar behaviors and how they are trying to please the world that keeps on neglecting them. Just as the narrator attempts to hold the reader’s attention by explaining the duplicitous nature of chicken raising echoes, so is what his father does by attempting to be noticed by strangers as a way of dealing with loneliness. In an effort to seek acceptance by the readers, the narrator tells one side of the story and seeking a voice that will be appealing to the audience. These are features portrayed by his father, who tries to use entertaining tricks that will help him fight the feeling of feeling rejected.
Anderson finds the story of the narrator very important, and this makes it difficult for him to put it in s simple way to the readers. He only shares some parts of the narration while leaving the rest for the reader to make conclusions. The structure of the narrative is complicated, and a reader must critically analyze it to be able to connect the different ideas in it. Just as how an egg has different layers, so is the structure of the narrative. The reader has to uncover all layers to understand the author’s and the narrator’s intentions. The deeper meaning of the story is protected by the text used by the author, like the way the fertile center of an egg is protected by the shell. To reach the fertile center of the story, the reader must break the shell by reading it critically.
Sherwood Anderson, The Egg’s main theme, is the ambition of the two parents who struggle to achieve the American dream. The dream seems far of as they try many ways that fail. Ambition makes the narrator’s father unhappy, which is not the case in the first part of the story, where the narrator says that his father had been born a cheerful manner. The story relates to modern life, where people struggle to achieve their dreams in many ways.
It is interesting how the ambition to have a good life can make someone unhappy. It would be expected that if when someone has a dream, they would be so happy when in the process of achieving their dream. Life has its own way of teaching lessons, and achieving a dream can never be easy. An ambitious person should remain focused and keep in mind the fact that it won’t be easy. Remaining focused means that even when challenges happen, an ambitious person should not give up.
Failure and ambition are associated, and they go together in the manner that something will fail. Failure is a way to learn and grow; an ambitious person looks at failure as a stepping stone to success. However, it is important to note that a person should be cautious with the state of mind that failure leaves them in; for example, a new business can be robbed during its initial stages. This would be traumatizing to the owner of the business and cause depression. Depression can make the person close the business, or worse, even commit suicide. However, an ambitious person should look for a solution to the problem. The ambitious person will improve his security features and continue doing business.
Ambition calls for a positive attitude to the way a person will view the world. The narrator says he got his first impression of life at the chicken farm; his view of the farm is negative. This is because the chicken farm was not his ambition. For someone to remain ambitious, they should have taken a positive view of life. In this event, any obstacles along the way are just easy to overcome. The narrator’s mother seems to be positive as the narrator says it is her that made his father ambitious. She quits her teaching job, which is a white-collar, and goes to chicken farming, which she knew would have better pay. This shows her positive mindset.
It is, however, important not to be overambitious. This can lead to frustration as a person would be longing to achieve his dream too fast. If a person reviewed their efforts towards their dream, they would definitely be proud of themselves and work towards the dream
Works Cited.
Anderson, Sherwood. The Triumph of the Egg, and Other Stories. J. Cape, 1922.
Savin, Mark. “Coming Full Circle: Sherwood Anderson’s” The Egg”.” Studies in Short Fiction 18.4 (1981): 454.