Anton Talarico | Definitive Analysis | Sherwood Anderson's "The Egg"

Everybody owes it to themselves to give it a "shot," don't they? To bite off a piece of the American Dream? Do the best that we can? In "The Egg," Sherwood Anderson begins with a typical man's short-lived happiness, working on a farm, single and singing in a bar with friends. What eventually follows is a marriage, and then a ceaseless ambition to be a charismatic owner of a restaurant, catering to the town's youth, entertaining and serving food, all in the town of Pickleville. "The Egg" provides us a great example of Anderson's grotesque, a character trying to be something that he/she is not naturally inclined to be, going against themselves in many respects. In fact, "The Egg" gives us two grotesques, the father and the son, as both "battle" to break into the periphery of society, as a conflict wages within them both: the cynic versus the dreamer. This story has some beautiful moments, like the narrator looking back on his childhood and recalling his father taking a nap, as he imagined the legions of Caesar pushing outward from Rome down a path on his bald head. Anderson describes the wonder we imagine from a textbook, heroes in print and majesty, the ambition of the greatest leaders to ever live - pioneers - trendsetters - the determination to be successful, to forge a unique path forward, that resonates us with us as young people observing our parents/guardians. The father turns out to be what he displays to Joe Kane in the restaurant: a two-headed, seven-legged deformed chicken preserved in alcohol, and Anderson's alignment of the absurd with the reality is achieved at the end, and alighted as the family comes together and the business closes, and for the moment, at least, the egg rests gently on the nightstand and there is no sound of the train outside. Of course there is the nagging question of the egg. But then again, I guess that is the point. It's the story of ambition, and how we hear it, how we saw it and grew up with it, and how it was told to us, and how it tricked us, and ultimately, how it made us feel...and how it made us hurt. I hope you enjoy this installment of Definitive Analysis. Table of Contents: Introduction & A Contented Father - 0:00 Mother and Ambition - 3:31 Raised on a Chicken Farm - 6:03 Restaurant Business & Father Taking a Nap - 9:45 The Father as a Grotesque - 16:36 Pickleville and the Preservation of a Monster - 20:56 I Want to Be Famous! - 28:38 Most Important Demographic: the Youth - 34:07 Christopher Columbus and the Dirty, Rotten Egg Trick - 37:09 The Grotesque's Final Trick - 42:01 The Egg and the Family - a Final Return - 47:29