A Literary Analysis Of Singer's Gimpel The Fool

Singer’s use of Gimpel in “Gimpel the Fool” is both an interesting and odd choice. Gimpel, was called a fool since he was always found believing some lie or the other. However, Gimpel himself believes that he is not a fool since he can see through all the disguises that the town tries to use. Instead of just pointing out how the town always does this, Gimpel chooses to follow through with the joke. In fact, this is the cycle that is repeated with every lie: tell Gimpel the lie, he decides believes it, make fun of him and repeat. Through this experience, Gimpel firmly believes that he’s not a fool since he can see through the lies. However, Gimpel is a fool, since he does not choose to stand up for himself and instead decides to go with the
This is a highly characterizing scene for Gimpel, since it is the first time he has tried to stand up for himself. Gimpel also reveals his reverence for religion, since the first person he asked was the rabbi. The rabbi listens to Gimpel and offers this as a response: “It is written, it is better to be a fool all the days of your life than to be evil one hour for one hour” (Singer 2). What the rabbi states is that Gimpel is looking at his situation in the wrong light. For as helpful as this advice is, it really isn’t, since Gimpel is left in the same situation for most of his life. The rabbi doesn’t try to give Gimpel a satisfying answer, which is probably why the saying is in quotes, mocking it. To further the problem, the rabbi is speaking from the holy scripture of Judaism (Clasby 90). This is interesting since the rabbi is pulling in information from the Kabbala (Clasby 90). The Kabbala is considered as a mystical source of information for Jewish texts, especially the end (Clasby 90). Thus, by using a text that isn’t very clear in the first place, the rabbi offers little help to Gimpel. The rabbi does try to help Gimpel another time during the story, but that was after the first child was