the egg 赏析备课讲稿

t h e e g g赏析

Name: 徐璐

Number: 12010011056 c班

英语小说选读

Teacher:刘亚娜

Date: 2012-12-30

The egg

“The egg” was written by Sherwood Anderson, an American writer. He chose a little boy as the narrator. In my opinion, the author wants to make readers think deeply and to dig out the theme of story. The tale is talking about struggle of sad history of a couple. At the beginning, father works as a farmhand. When he was thirty-fifty, he married a woman. After their only child born, “they become ambitious”. “Mother induce father to give up his place and embark on an independent enterprise of his own.”——chicken raising. It failed. But they did not give up. They

began another. “They moved to the town of Bedwill, Ohio, and embarked in the restaurant business.” It still failed. In this story, symbolism is obviously important element. The egg has a variety of meanings. Next, I am going to analyze symbolism and characters, trying to figure out the purpose of this short story.

This story is told by a boy. On his point of view, he saw a world which different from adult had seen. At first, his father, boy said, was a cheerful and kindly man by nature. He worked as a farmhand, quite happy in his position in life. But his mother was quite ambitious for his father and himself. On the narrator’s part, because his parents were busy charging their chicken farm and take less care of him. Then “he became a gloomy man inclined to seethe darker side of life.” The egg here stands for a thief. As far as I am concerned, child should be naïve and puerile when he was young. He should enjoy his careless childhood. Nevertheless, the thief was just breaking into boy’s life and disturbing his childhood, stealing away nature of boy and making him become premature. The boy found that “chicken eats quantities of corn and meal bought by the sweat of father’s brow, gets diseases, stands looking with stupid eyes at the sun, become sick and dies.” Father did not harvest anything but wasted his money and effort. So the egg not only steals boy’ happiness, but also rob father’ treasure. Because father was a cheerful, kindly man” before, he was in order to achieve a better life for his child. And he found another job. The situation of family, however, was not change and got worse. The egg has other symbolism. It is parasite which just gets what they need and take everything from its owner. The reason is that father devoted himself to his chicken, such as time, energy and money. The truth is that the egg is always taking but never gives. They wasted father’ money, and took away his hope. Now he gained nothing but “dreadful cycle”. “Thus this family gave up struggle and began another.” During the journey of moving house, child recalled