Green Eggs and Paulie Shore
With only 51 different words used throughout the 671 words of the story, the structure does not offer much opportunity for similes. Individual metaphors are a lost cause as well, but on a grander scale, those 51 words manage to really overshoot any conventional expectations regarding the metaphorical dimension of this story. Consider that on one immediate level the title “Green Eggs and Ham” becomes a brilliantly succinct metaphor covering the fundamental necessity of a consumer-based economy.
When the economy is dependent not upon manufacturing and production, but instead grows or withers on the basis of what people are buying, sustainability is simply no longer possible by simply selling people what they want. Green eggs and ham is metaphor for every new product ever introduced that people had to actually be talked into buying because they neither needed nor wanted it.
“In a Car?”
That Sam-I-Am asks a lot of questions. Some of them are more meaningful than others from a strictly metaphorical point of view. The automobile started its life in American society as simply a replacement for the horse that got you from one point to another, eventually even more quickly and comfortably. It took precious little time, however, for the car to become something to people around the world, but especially to Americans: a way to no longer be limited to enjoying the things you love at home only when you were at home.
Cars have become the place to “try” new things that have become expected things: radio, pre-recorded music, movies, television shows, cold soda, hot food, sleeping, massaging your feet, etc. When Sam asks the big fellow if he wants to try green eggs and ham in a car, it leaps from being merely literal food to a metaphor for everything that already has and one day will make that leap from something only enjoyed at home to becoming standard equipment on all new cars.
The Narrative
Even though almost nothing of substance actually happens in the story, it is always in constant motion. Sam’s arrival on the scene is a three-shot of him arriving from stage left, exiting stage right and then reappearing headed in the opposite direction. From that moment on, he is pure movement and be brings (or pushes) the big guy with him. Sam is equipped with a variety of mechanical extensions for his arms, there is a train in addition to the card and, climactically, even a boat. It is an action movie that is always moving, but with precious little actual action. And what familiar work of cinematic arts does that description fit perfectly: television commercials. The entire narrative is a metaphor for how TV advertising engages to distract and offers storytelling promises almost always left unfulfilled.
Surrender But Don’t Give Yourself Away
The big guy finally surrenders to the incessant, persistent, invasive and uninformative marketing campaign by Sam-I-Am. Sam wears him down and he gives in. Metaphorically, this moment is merely a replication of every single time someone who swore they would never return to Wal-Mart again returns to Wal-Mart again as much as it is a metaphor for someone lighting up a cigarette who swore just yesterday that this time they were going to quit for good and kick the habit at midnight. Surrendering to advertising is the one and genuine authentic aspect of modern life that binds every single American into one.
“Thank you, Sam-I-Am!"
At first blush, this may seem merely to be an unexpected irony. After all this time refusing to taste it, the big guy winds up liking green eggs and ham. But take note of what he does after this epiphany. He proceeds to repeat, line-by-line and word-for-word, the litany of what Sam has been saying as part of his sale approach. He would eat them in a boat, with a goat, in the rain, the dark, and on a train. He doesn’t just discover that he lives green eggs and ham, he commits to being perfectly down with eating them in boxes and with foxes and in houses and with mouses.
There is really no valid way of determining whether he actually and genuinely does like the taste of green eggs and ham or whether he has just become another robot zombie consumer brainwashed by marketing genius into thinking—perhaps only temporarily—he likes something that actually really doesn’t. What is he a metaphor for? Probably only every single person who has ever bought more than two things in their life.
