People say that in the famous nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty, the main character is an egg. Although they say he is, the rhyme doesn’t say that. The nursery rhyme goes like this:
- 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 back together again
As you can see, nowhere does it say that Humpty Dumpty was an egg. So why do we assume the character was one? One idea is that parents wanted to shelter their kids from the gruesome aspects of the rhyme. Without the context of Humpty Dumpty being an egg, the rhyme takes a very dark turn, which might not be suitable for the age demographic of three years old. In order to protect their children from the horrifying aspects of the story, parents made the main character an egg, not a human. Another theory is that Humpty Dumpty is a symbol of the United States and falling from the wall represents the country's separation from England. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men (England) couldn't put Humpty Dumpty (America) back together again. This is obviously a metaphor for Great Britain trying to get America to go back to Britain. So, the character remains a mystery. Sadly, we can't ask the creator since he passed away a couple hundred years ago, but we can always speculate on why they changed him to an anthropomorphic egg man.
