Being There Essay

Brilliance without Knowing It By definition brilliance is someone who is incredibly talented or clever. Chance Gardner is an extremely gifted character who I consider to be brilliant. Kosinski demonstrated a superficial world and how a man with no knowledge other then the television can fool people and make his way up in society. In the novel Being There, by Jerzy Kosinski the character of Chance Gardner makes the distinction between human behavior and comes from a past that one he encounters would ever know. Chance Gardner is arguably a brilliant character and is arguably considered to be a complex person. I personally think that Chance is not complex what so ever. He doesn’t think into things too much and is actually very blunt. Usually people become smart or brilliant by studying, researching, and being extremely disciplined. Through this they gain tremendous amount of knowledge. Chance Gardner proves that you do not have to do those things to be considered a smart person. If someone were to read the middle of the novel, without reading anything prior to that, then they would probably make the assumption that he went to a great college, continued on to grad school, gained work experience, and applied himself to make his way up in society. The greatest thing about Chance is he did none of those things to get to the places he did in the book. It is important to understand Chance’s background and history of his up bringing to really grasp the novel. Chance is not someone who grew up with his family, went to school, had friends, or someone who went through normal things that most people did. Chance is an orphan and no he did not live in an orphanage or have foster families. Kosinski explains, “Chance was a orphan, and it was the Old Man himself who had sheltered him in the house ever since Chance was a child. Chance’s mother had died when he was born. No one, not even the Old Man, would tell him who his father was,” (7). Chance spends all his time in the