When I was a little girl I found a page torn from a book in the small book case we had in the “laundry room” on the roof. The page had the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme illustrated on it, very similar to this one:
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men.
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
- Source
In my childish mind then and up until today I can’t get over how tragic that story is, how morbid and heartbreaking. This is a cute character for children who is first seen smiling and then falls off a wall and shatters into pieces, it dies right there in the rhyme and nobody can help it. I have always found nursery rhymes to be generally inappropriate under the excuse of achieving music.
That said, I now love the metaphor in Humpty Dumpty. Think of Humpty as a negative concept of your choice, let’s say dominance or monopoly of power, then think: the fake image shatters and “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men” cannot put it back again. That’s why fragile people like Humpty Dumpty should not sit on walls.
Which is why all the king’s men is used as the title of a famous American novel about demagoguery & power.
This rhyme has an entirely different meaning as I revisit it as an adult. It applies to quite a few people I have known, some of them shaped just like Humpty.
i carried this rhyme too for a while in my head. i actually always liked it, now more as a notion of a negative concept, as you would call it! cool post thxs.