Andersen’s revelation of most of the themes of his stories is often used epiphany, so that his characters and even readers can learn that American dream is the inescapable trap. Before my father got marriage with my mom. He worked as a farmer for a long time. “Until he was thirty-four years old he worked as a farm-hand for a man named Thomas Butterworth whose place lay near the town of Bidwell, Ohio.” (Anderson 17) So before my father’s 34, he is a prime field hand. It can know that the society is fit for the economy of self- sufficiency. At this time, it did not enter the industrial society in United State. So people do not need to worry about their future. And my father have no American dream. He did not fall into the trap. When he met my mom, my father became ambitious. Firstly, he ran a chicken farm. He is influenced by mom. And mom is a teacher. She learned a lot of outside information from newspaper and magazine, for example story of Garfield, Lincoln, and other Americans who rose  from poverty to fame and greatness. We can conclude that it is time for industrial society. After the first world war, it boosts the United State economy. It subtly changes people’s concept of American dream. They have the wealth dream. The bourgeoisie collects most of the wealth of American. But the ordinary did not recognize this. They just fellow the step of most people. This time my father had been in the trap.They are bland to the industrial society. Then my father and mother opened a small restaurant near the train station. Train is the tool of the development in industrial society. It means the outside development is so fast. For people who are like my father and mom, they are confused with the world. But they have no choice but to fellow the false world. My father knows the regulation of the false world. He wanted to keep himself not changed, but he failed. “ ‘Well,’ he began hesitatingly, ‘well, you have heard of Christopher Columbus, eh? He seemed to be angry. That Christopher Columbus was a cheat, he declared emphatically. He talked of making an egg stand on its end. He talked, he did, and then he went and broke the end of the egg.’ ” (Anderson 20) My father thought Christopher Columbus was a cheat, and what he said is wrong for him. So he did know the false of American dream. But all the American are dreaming about it. He has a family, and he is a father. He must followed them and struggle in inner heart. Human society falls into a morbid state. No matter how father escapes, the American dream is still a trap that is inescapable for father. It is also the fate of all ordinary people.

Andersen’s novel always shows strong tendency to the social problems. He often uses the absurd plots in novel to allude the absurdity, giving prominence to the chaos, injustice even crazy world. The most important feature of his work is it contacts the reality and tragic fate together. It reveals that world is an inescapable trap.

4. Tragic characters

4.1 Alienation of human nature

In the agricultural society, the nature of human is simple, kind and compassionate. But with the development of industry, people are constantly affected by the society, and they gradually deviate from the original characteristics of human nature, becoming selfish, indifferent, and abnormal.

Winesburg Ohio is Andersen’s typical novel about the grotesques. To some extent,   The Triumph of the Egg is also a set of the grotesques. They has the common  theme:  the corruption and degeneration of American society in pursuit of money. Through a not sensible child vision, The Triumph of the Egg describes his father’s miserable and slippery situation. Before my father got marriage. My father was a simple farm worker, live a safe country life without cheating. “My father was, I am sure, intended by nature to be a cheerful, kindly man...He had then a horse of his own and on Saturday evenings drove into town to spend a few hours in social intercourse with other farm-hands...At ten o’clock  father  drove home along a lonely country road, made his horse comfortable for the night and himself went to bed, quite happy in his position in life. He had at that time no notion of trying to rise in the world.” (Anderson 17) He lived a simple, happy and contented life, and never thought of climbing to the upper echelons or becoming a big shot. Every day he lived a regular life: he went to the farm to make money on weekdays and rode to town on Saturdays for a few beers and went home on time; then he washed his horse and fell asleep. It could say that father’s single life is very happy, even romantic. But, when got married with mom, “then a country school-teacher, and in the following spring I came wriggling and crying into the world. Something  happened to the two people. They became ambitious. The American passion for getting up in the world took possession of them.” (Anderson 17) With the enlightening and inspiring of mother who is a knowledge women, my father gradually became ambitious and wanted to rise head and shoulders above others. The author uses his father’s funny appearance suggested that father could be contradict with the real life. Then it is more ridiculous when he start his business. The couple thought chicken could get rich, but their chickens seem easily to catch disease. “It is born out of an egg, lives for a few weeks as a tiny fluffy thing such as you will see pictured on Easter cards, then becomes hideously naked, eats quantities of corn and meal bought by the sweat of your father’s brow, gets diseases called pip, cholera, and other names, stands looking with stupid eyes at the sun, becomes sick and dies.” (Anderson 17) The author uses the comparison between father’s effort and the healthy of chicken to indicate the changes of father.My father did not throw the freak chick, instead of making them into bubble in alcohol. “They were preserved in alcohol and put each in its own glass bottle. These he had carefully put into a box and on our journey into town it was carried on the wagon seat beside him.” (Anderson 18) My father is forced to became the grotesque like the freak chick. 《鸡蛋的胜利》的黑色幽默解读(4):http://www.chuibin.com/yingyu/lunwen_206647.html