The term black humor refers to the humorous treatment of what is grotesque, morbid, or terrifying. It is the juxtaposition of humor and horror. (Zhuang i) So black humor is not a general sense of humor, it contains bitter taste and tragedy color. “Black”refers to a state of characteristic in thought emotion, namely gloomy and depression, sad and painful  despair, and it is an objective reality. To contrast the absurd and serious theme of alienation of human nature. Black humor can make people excavate the deeper connotation of black humor from the surface of joy. We will find that black humor is permeated with strong tragic color, which reflects the absurdity of the world, the madness of society and the self-destruction of human beings. Black humor can not only make people laugh, but also make people have a profound understanding of the reality of ugliness and absurdity. As Alderman said in the preface to Beyond the Wasteland, “Black humor is a reaction that mismatches pain with laughter, absurd facts with calmness. A comedy in which cruelty and tenderness juxtaposed, black humorists treat accidents, reverse actions and atrocities, and laugh them off with a shrug of shoulders like a clown.” (Cui 68)

2. Literature Review

Since the publication of The Triumph of the Egg by Andersen, different scholars and critic interpreted the novel from various perspective. Some domestic scholars analyzed Sherwood with different angles. For example, Andersen’s Creation Style from The Triumph of the Egg (Liang) mainly discusses Andersen’s creative method and how to express his  style and technique through his works; Then, The Interpret of The Triumph of the Egg from the graphic background theory (Hao) thus summarizes up the main theme of the article: chicken and eggs are symbols of his father’s American dream, and his father’s daily business can only end with failure. His American dream was a daydream; The Literary Theory of Post-colonialism and New Historicism (Wang) puts forward that the text should be interpreted comprehensively from the angles of political rights, ideology and cultural hegemony. The tradition was reversed by formalism and old historicism; As mentioned in The Selected Works of Foreign Modernism, (Yuan Kejia) “the typical feature of the modernist school in its ideological content is its overall distortion and serious alienation in the four  basic relationships: the sharp contradictions and deformities between man and society, man and man, man and nature and between man and self result in trauma, abnormal psychology, pessimism, despair and nihilism. Thus the paper reflects their inner pressure under the gaunt, deformity, alienation.

In foreign countries, many scholars also comment on Sherwood Andersen’s the Triunph of the Egg. “Anderson does not believe that country life is like many other works,” suggested A Brief Introduction to Modern American Literature. (Boozz E.B.) The family described it as contented. His characters are usually lonely, isolated, dissatisfied with their lives  and frustrated in their pursuit of something better. In this paper, the process of father’s dissimilation can be reflected in American Literal Missioin Hills (Kearns, George, et al.) Anderson once mentioned “to choose to be among the fools of life” in the preface to The Triumph of the Egg. To some extent, rather than the fools of material power’s abhorrence of the American dream thought, which was exaggerated in American society at the time, as well as the current state of the society. It also explains his decision to abandon business when his career is booming.

Some scholars studied symbolism in The Triumph of the Egg. Andersen’s use of symbolism in the short story― The Triumph of the Egg. (He Ting) The bodies of the deformed chicks soaked in alcohol studied the symbolism of eggs in six aspects of the egg trick performed in front of guests. They are the chicken farm, the dying chicken in the chicken farm, the strange abnormal chicken in the chicken farm and the basket of live chickens in the moving car.Based on the above researches, the thesis intends to analyze the short novel from the angle of black humor, including the absurd world, tragic characters and the discontinued scenes.and it helps the reader appreciate the novel from absurd world, tragic characters and the discontinued scenes.