A Summary of “The Triumph of The Egg”
“The triumph of the egg” is a short story written by Sherwood Anderson exploring the inextricable fate of a young boy who grew up watching his parents try to climb a shaky ladder of success with extreme persistence only to find themselves falling over and over again. It takes place in Bidwell, Ohio during pre-automobile America. The boy tells of his father, who until he got married with his mother at the age of 35 was a simple, hardworking farmhand. He led a life that was considerably uncomplicated and was perfectly content with the way things were. Then the narrator was born, and things started to change. The mother, having a profession of a schoolteacher that had immersed herself in America’s rags to riches stories soon found in herself a growing and soaring ambition for her husband and her son to reach for something higher in life and acquire “the American passion for getting up in the world”. From there she convinced the husband to quit his job, sell his horses and embark on something new. They entered into the world of chicken-raising in a land they had rented a few miles away from Bidwell where the narrator witnessed the cycle of life of chickens being what he described as tragic and realized a striking resemblance between those chickens and people. After 10 years of attempt, the family gave up and opened a restaurant. One night, a customer named Joe Kane came into the restaurant, waiting for his train. The father, with his