“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!”
Simple words from a nursery rhyme, as old as the age of the English speaking nations, that puzzles humans till this very day, and yes, it was intended as a riddle, one that has been covered up by the naive association with the egg character; Humpty Dumpty was never an egg, but some thought it would better to insinuate to others that he was, and since he's an egg, he couldn't be saved from his “great fall”. The question then remains : Was that the original intent of the riddle? Or is it otherwise?
My attempt to tackle such a riddle was not without motive; I simply wondered about the third verse, why was it necessary to reference the “king's” horses and men as the saviors of Humpty Dumpty, why was it necessary to dispatch the most authoritative and highly trained resources – in respect of the time that poem was written – to save an egg? Come to think of it, the misdirection of fragility of Humpty Dumpty, makes it easier for the misguided to believe he was an egg; we're willing to admit that we could not save him because he was a trivial fragile existence, but that's it , we can save everything else.
Some may refer this behavior as arrogance, but the truth is, it's denial. The third verse highly suggests that even the most capable could not repair anything once it shatters. So now we can widen the horizon a little more, like what Humpty Dumpty did; oh yeah, he “sat” on a wall, sat not walked on, not jumped around on it, he SAT on it, so what happened that made him lose balance and fall?
The wall was high, since the fall was “great”, I can only assume or predict that he had a wider perspective of the world around him since the wall was high. I also will assume or predict that something came into his field of vision that troubled him to the level of losing balance and falling , and here comes the tricky part with that rhyme, what was it that he “saw” in a wider perspective of his world that led to his shattering and by consequence, the failure to save him.
Terrible thoughts will roam your mind right now, I know, this is the purpose of the riddle and poem, to warn those who aspire to be the Humpty Dumptys in life; for once one passes the threshold that protects our merely pathetic comprehension of life, one must be ready for the troubling realizations in consequences of such a wider perspective, and then none, not even the most capable of humans can help one put oneself back together, because simply they do not comprehend life at that level.
At that note I 'll leave the words to wonder inside your mind, as I have been letting them wonder inside my own. I might be wrong in my analysis, and, by consequence, my interpretation of the poem, however, it's just a thought of mine.
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