59 pages • 1-hour read
Eggs
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Character Analysis
Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to death.
David Limpert
David Limpert is the nine-year-old protagonist of Eggs, and his primary inner conflict comes from his overwhelming grief over his mother’s sudden death a year before the novel’s events. David’s grief manifests in erratic ways. For example, he feels anger toward anyone who might try to mother him, like his grandmother, and he strictly adheres to a range of arbitrary superstitions. The most prominent of these is his determination never to break rules, and he even believes that “if he went a long enough time without breaking a rule […] a score would be settled, and his mother would come back” (31). David also keeps his memento of his mother a secret from everyone, and he distances himself from things that remind him of his mother, such as his favorite bedtime story and even the sunrise.
David’s life is lonely because his father is away during the week, and he also misses all of his friends in Minnesota. He has no one to provide him with comfort aside from the grandmother he rejects. Into this bleak existence comes his unlikely friend Primrose. David first encounters her when he mistakenly believes that she is a dead girl in the forest; rather than being afraid, he immediately spills his story to her “corpse,” and this incongruous scene emphasizes his fixation upon death. Soon afterward, he meets Primrose officially, and the two children quickly form a tight but tumultuous bond that vacillates between kindness and mutual antagonism. Primrose challenges David, treating him as if he were a younger sibling. Although David regularly tells Primrose, “I don’t like you” (63), he continues to seek her out.
Primrose helps him to confront his superstitions by dragging him out of his comfort zone over and over again. She takes David out in the dark, forcing him to quickly cope with his fears, and she also challenges him to do things that feel like rule-breaking, such as painting over her van windows. However, she pushes him too far when she dresses up as a mother for a library event and pretends that David is her son; in this moment, her play-acting pushes him further into his grief.
Occasionally, David takes on a caregiving role for Primrose, just as she sometimes takes care of him. He often braids her hair for her, and in the final chapters, as they spend the night by the railroad tracks, he reads her to sleep, filling the voids left by her unorthodox home life. Primrose also fills a void for David in the novel’s final scenes when she tricks him into viewing the sunrise. As he finally overcomes this crucial superstition, he clings to her and sobs, understanding she is not his mother but accepting that “there aren’t enough rules in the universe to bring his mother back” (204). In the final chapters, he comes to accept the love from people like his grandmother, Primrose, Refrigerator John, and his father, and he feels much more content with life.
Primrose Dufee
Primrose Dufee is the 13-year-old deuteragonist, who has just moved into a junker van in her yard to avoid sharing a bedroom with her mother in their small home. Primrose has an uneasy relationship with her mother, whom she disparages for working as a fortune-teller. Primrose longs for a “nice, normal mother […] that cooks dinner. That takes me places. That buys me stuff” (123). Primrose and David meet officially when Primrose attends story time, so she can pretend her mother is reading her to sleep—an experience Primrose never got as a young child.
When David first finds Primrose pretending to be dead in the forest, he thinks to himself that she has “the most beautiful face he had ever seen” (18). When he later meets her officially, he soon discovers that she has a spitfire personality. She is outspoken and always takes the lead in the things that the two friends do together. Unlike David, she abides by no specific rules. She has no curfew, no punishments, and no obligation to even live inside her home. In this way, she often serves as David’s foil, pushing him to confront his superstitions and break the rules that he clings to. From the start, she takes an antagonistic tone with David—tricking him, mocking him, and generally treating him like a little brother.
However, the narrative soon reveals that Primrose needs David, just as he needs her. She has no other friends besides David and Refrigerator John, and her van windows are regularly egged by her peers. As she begins to realize how important David is to her, she does her best to take care of him by buying him food and doting on him. Eventually, she proves herself to be a trustworthy person when she helps him to confront his superstitions and finally watch the sunrise. In the absence of traditional family support, Primrose and David find comfort in one another.
At the end of the novel, when Primrose and David are returned safely to town, Primrose is surprised to see that her mother is standing at the very front of the group, welcoming them home. She then comes to understand that her mother does indeed love her, and she decides to reconnect with her mother by abandoning her van bedroom and moving back into the house.
Refrigerator John
Refrigerator John is a man who lives on Primrose’s street, in the only other occupied building. He has built his house out of scraps from the junkyard. Refrigerator John has a withered leg that makes walking and running more difficult, and he is used to people treating him differently, which is why he and Primrose get along so well. Unlike many others, Primrose “didn’t seem to notice how short or gimpy he was. She looked him in the eye and talked to him” (74).
When Primrose begins bringing David to Refrigerator John’s place, he worries about how to keep the two children out on the streets and devises a plan to “entice them to stay at his place as much as possible” (75). This plan involves obtaining a television, games, and many kid-friendly snacks and drinks. John’s concern for the children comes from a place of true care, and he soon becomes a secondary guardian for them.
John learns a great deal about both children through their often-heated interactions at his home. He also helps them to work through their conflicts, and he understands that they both come from unorthodox households. When David runs to John’s place to hide from the sunrise, John goes along with David’s wishes, even though he doesn’t truly understand the underlying issue. John’s patience is vital to the children’s inner growth and healing, and in the end, he is among the people waiting for their safe return.
David’s Grandmother
David’s grandmother, Margaret Limpert, is David’s only adult guardian during the week, as his father only comes home on weekends. Margaret feels a deep sadness about David’s problematic methods of coping with his mother’s death. David rejects his grandmother’s attempts to bond with him, snubbing her because he believes that she is trying to replace his mother. With the stubborn mindset that “[n]obody’s [his] mother (64), David delights in doing things that might annoy or upset his grandmother, but he always finds himself growing annoyed to realize that no matter what he does, he cannot upset her or push her away completely.
Margaret makes repeated attempts to break through David’s tough shell. She takes him to events at the library, hoping that he will make friends, and she tries to talk to other kids on David’s behalf. She makes him lunch every day, adding a carrot because it’s good for him; every day, he rejects the carrot. Margaret knows that David has “resented another person taking [his mother’s] place” (127), and she gives him the space he demands.
However, she struggles with her limited role, wondering, “How much space can you give someone you live with? Someone you love?” (127). Despite the boy’s dismissive behavior, Margaret continues to support David whenever he has a rare question or comment, hoping that he might finally be “thawing, inching back to his old self” (129). Eventually, David begins to understand that he needs to accept love from other sources, as his mother will not be returning. He begins to respect his grandmother and builds a closer bond with her, talking to her often and eating the carrots that she lovingly prepares with his lunch each day.
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