but why an egg?
One large social game of story Telephone
Last week as my friend and I were doing our best, pretending to do homework, she asked me to help her with an assignment.
Re-imagine the nursery rhyme, Humpty Dumpty
You know that classic little poem, of the egg that fell off the wall and cracked. Well in case your parents never read you a bedtime story (and I’m sorry to hear that), allow me to refresh your memory.
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.
There you go, the egg rhyme.
WAIT.
HUMPTY IS NEVER SAID TO BE AN EGG.
HUH?!/?
This inconsistency was all I needed to go on a procrastinating whirl-wind search of how this legend, this iconic imagery — how we interpret and tell stories — came to be.

why an egg?
It was only fit to research the origin of the rhyme in hopes to contextualize where we are now.
It was written in 1810 and most likely named after a cannon used in the English Civil War way back in the 1600s. In England, the name Humpty Dumpty has two connotations. The first to describe a rather large and clumsy man. And the second a name of a large cannon. Important backstory, but still no egg.
Lewis Caroll’s Alice takes the cake on that. In Alice Through the Looking Glass, Caroll describes and depicts a very round man that Alice mistakes for an egg. She mentions “how exactly like an egg he is!” to which his response

‘It’s very provoking,’ Humpty Dumpty said after a long silence, looking away from Alice as he spoke, ‘to be called an egg — very!
For all intents and purpose, Humpty Dumpty himself states he is NOT an egg. But later on, like I aforementioned, he does concede that his name defines the shape he is, clearly round. However, Lewis Caroll ignited a fire with this encounter and from henceforth, most people’s associations and illustrations were of an egg.
Children’s book, television programming, future movies. If Humpty Dumpty was there, he was an egg.
This simple 26 words rhyme. Ignoring the image I have of the cracked egg, I tried to parse what it was saying. My conclusion was this: A man had fallen from power or a place of security and none of his friends could make him happy again. No one could fix him.
I wouldn’t say the most positive ending to lull a child.
Maybe that’s why the story of an egg persisted because unlike people, they are suppose to crack. It seemed more gentle. People latched on to the image without second thought because it makes sense. We let Humpty Dumpty be an egg because to portray a large man falling to children seems cruel. We opt for the other story, allowing this new tale to be so much engrained in our minds that we forget the truth all together.
It isn’t the only nursery rhyme at the time with potentially dark meaning or origin, however, it is one that depicts the power of stories. A chapter in a book, a story itself, had the power to brainwash entire generations of a characteristic that was never stated. People let that happened because that’s what they were told to believe, and in short, what they wanted to believe.

So, an egg on a wall lives on…
that is until it falls.