The Egg (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: Sherwood Anderson
- First Published: 1921
- Type of Plot: Regional
- Time of Work: The beginning of the twentieth century
- Setting: A small town in Ohio
- Principal Characters: The narrator, His father, His mother, Joe Kane
- Genres: Realism, Short fiction, Regional fiction
- Subjects: Parents and children, Philosophy or philosophers, Farms, farmers, or farming, Fathers, Life and death, Eggs
- Locales: Ohio
The Story
“The Egg” tells the story of a childhood memory that has in a profound way shaped its narrator's moral outlook. The tale centers on the narrator's father, a man “intended by nature to be . . . cheerful [and] kindly,” who, through acquiring the “American passion for getting up in the world,” loses his happiness. The father's loss engenders in the son a sense of tragedy and irresolution and a conviction that “the egg”—the source and symbol of that loss—completely and utterly triumphs over life.
The narrator begins his story by describing his...
[The entire page is 1707 words long]
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