摘要：

短篇小说《鸡蛋》是美国著名作家舍伍德.安德森的一个经典代表作。小说反映了在工业化浪潮的冲击之下，普通中下阶层的人们因为心存梦想，为了追求事业的成功、生活的幸福而不断努力，结果却是不断的失败，直至梦想破灭的过程。安德森在描写主人公的内心世界中，语言简洁，生动幽默，尤其使用了象征手法。本文通过对文中的一些象征意义的实例分析，对故事中的主要人物的心灵进行剖析，揭示了中下层人们在实现自己“美国梦”中的艰辛。

关键词：象征主义；鸡蛋；美国梦；破灭

Abstract:

The Egg is a famous short fiction written by Sherwood Anderson who is an outstanding writer in American literature. This fiction mainly reflects the ordinary people’s anxiety and depression under the impact of industrialization. They believed the existence of the American dream and in order to realize this dream they worked hard with great perseverance and tireless efforts. While all their attempts were failed. Anderson is good at describing people’s feeling about certain things, especially to portray their inner world. His depiction of the characters’ psychological feelings is detailed and vivid. The language of the fiction is concise and humorous. The use of symbolism in this fiction shows Anderson’s excellent artistic talent. This paper, through some examples, presents the symbolic meanings in the short story and gives a thorough analysis of the main character—the father’s inner world; And through the analysis this paper will also reveal the hardships of the ordinary people when seeking for their American dream.

Key words: symbolism; egg; American Dream; disillusion

1. Introduction
Since 1776, generations of Americans always believe that they could have a better life with unremitting efforts. However, it is not easy to realize their dreams. It is even extremely difficult to the lower class people. Many literatures and critics focus this topic and numerous works appear to show people's successes and failures on their way to realize their dreams. The Egg is one of the typical fictions refers to the American Dream. The short story reflects the ordinary people’s anxiety and depression under the impact of industrialization. They believed the existence of the American Dream and in order to realize this dream they worked hard with great perseverance and tireless efforts. But they were ended with failure. Anderson is good at describing people’s feeling about certain things, especially to portray their inner world. His depiction of the characters’ psychological feelings is detailed and vivid. The language of the fiction is concise and humorous. The use of symbolism in this fiction showed Anderson’s excellent artistic talent. This paper, through some examples, shows the symbolic meanings in the story and gives a thorough analysis to the main character---the father’s inner world.