How would you interpret the word ‘be’ in the phrase?
How would you interpret the word ‘be’ in the phrase ‘I wondered why eggs had to be’ in the second sentence?
I think it means to exist. What do you think?
Thanks. And it’s taken from The Egg by Sherwood Anderson.

the context
I awoke at dawn and for a long time looked at the egg that lay on the table. I wondered why eggs had to be and why from the egg came the hen who again laid the egg. The question got into my blood. It has stayed there, I imagine, because I am the son of my father. At any rate, the problem remains unsolved in my mind. And that, I conclude, is but another evidence of the complete and final triumph of the egg--at least as far as my family is concerned.

Question

How would you interpret the word ‘be’ in the phrase?
How would you interpret the word ‘be’ in the phrase ‘I wondered why eggs had to be’ in the second sentence?
I think it means to exist. What do you think?
Thanks. And it’s taken from The Egg by Sherwood Anderson.

the context
I awoke at dawn and for a long time looked at the egg that lay on the table. I wondered why eggs had to be and why from the egg came the hen who again laid the egg. The question got into my blood. It has stayed there, I imagine, because I am the son of my father. At any rate, the problem remains unsolved in my mind. And that, I conclude, is but another evidence of the complete and final triumph of the egg--at least as far as my family is concerned.

Answer

It means "to exist." Why do eggs have to exist? Why are life cycles so complicated?

To quote Samuel Butler, "A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg."

To quote him again--he obviously had been thinking about life cycles--"Why should the generations overlap one another at all? Why cannot we be buried as eggs in neat little cells with ten or twenty thousand pounds each wrapped round us in Bank of England notes, and wake up, as the sphex wasp does, to find that its papa and mamma have not only left ample provision at its elbow, but have been eaten by sparrows some weeks before it began to live consciously on its own account?"

Sherwood Anderson is similarly thinking about life, and life cycles, and human fate, in a similar irreverent and humorous way.

Answer

He wonders why eggs had to exist, exactly as you said. He is contemplating the circle of the chicken and thee egg, and how it fits into his life. It seems that he still hasn't come to terms with why the egg had to exist at all.

Answers · 4

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