Consumer Capitalism
The predominant theme of the story is an indictment of American consumer capitalism. Of all the colors one can imagine ham and eggs taking on that make them distinctly unpalatable, green would be the definitive one to avoid. In food not naturally colored green, that color signifies spoilage and the process of going rotten. Nobody in their right minds would want what Sam-I-Am is selling and yet, by the end, he has convinced--through sheer advertising and marketing strategic concepts of repetitive pestering—the big guy to try it. The story is an indictment of every rotten commodity that consumers have been suckered into buying by slick marketing geniuses, from snake oil to Presidential candidates.
The Power of Repetition
Ironically, the very same story which decries the ability to dumb down language in order to successfully sell things nobody really wants and certainly don’t need is also a textbook lesson in exactly how to use repetition to break down the resistance and will of a person in order to sell them something they insist they do not want. Sam-I-Am is ultimately successful in getting the big guy to eat the repulsive-looking food not by convincing him it is delicious, but simply by stripping of his will to resist. He only decides to try the green food as a last-chance, desperate attempt to rid himself of the salesman. And why is the big guy so desperate to rid himself of Sam?
Because Sam’s marketing strategy is simply to ask the same thing over and over and over again. The lesson to be learned here is that people respond to simple repetition of the same words and phrases. It might even be said to be endowed with a hypnotically suggestive quality. It is entirely possible that the big guy only thinks he likes green eggs and ham because Sam-I-Am has convinced him he would. As have been proven time and again—especially in the early decades of the twenty-first century—repeat something often enough and it can wield an influence beyond the ability of most to understand or explain.
