Humpty In Toni Morrison's Essay

“One must learn from their mistakes.” “If someone doesn’t have anything nice to say, they shouldn’t say anything at all.” “Everyone should treat others how they wish to be treated themselves.” These are common saying that almost everyone hears at least once in their lifetime. However, these saying do not really have any meaning or resonate with people until they come across an encounter with someone or something in which one of these statements applies, and then they can truly understand what it means. Interactions with other people are incredibly important to teach life lessons and to help a person grow and become more mature. There is no better example of the significance of learning from interactions with others than with Alice and her
. . ‘Of course it must,’ Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: ‘my name mean the shape I am-and a good handsome shape it is too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape almost’ ” (215). Alice’s encounter with Humpty Dumpty is focused around the meaning and importance of words. While conversing with Humpty Dumpty, Alice begins to become familiar with the fact that words have different meanings to each individual person; everyone interprets everything in their own way. Before her conversation with Humpty Dumpty, Alice believed names and other pronouns to be of little significance and she placed more emphasis on adjectives and descriptive words. Humpty Dumpty implies the opposite and believes a name should be a great descriptor of the person. This begins to alter Alice’s thinking and she starts to learn that she might use and see words in a different manner than how everyone sees them. Likewise, later in her encounter with Humpty Dumpty, Alice beings to understand the necessity and importance of language when responding to Humpty Dumpty’s question about her age, and Humpty Dumpty retorts, "'Seven years and six months! . . .