Gimpel The Fool
(Isaac Bashevis Singer)
Gimpel the Fool (1945) is a classic
Yiddish short story that demonstrates Singer's sense of irony. It is
best known from an English translation by Saul Bellow. Gimpel, a Jewish
baker, lives in eastern Europe around the turn of the 20th century.
Everyone in his village regards him as simple because he takes
everything at face value. His shrewish wife cheats on him, his
neighbors play coarse jokes on him, his children are not his own. Even
the village rabbi colludes in getting Gimpel to go along with the
status quo of being the butt of everyone's jokes. Gimple is surrounded
by lies and cynicism.
But Gimpel is not as simple as he seems. He knows what people do and
what goes on around him. He just chooses to keep an open mind, to see
the good in the world and not waste his time with the evil. By writing
the story from Gimpel's first-person point of view, Singer presents him
as an unworldly man but not a stupid one. As a child, this makes him
seem gullible. But as he grows older, his gentleness and good spirits
begin to have an effect on the cynical world that surrounds him. When
his wife dies young, she shoves her infidelities in his face, creating
a crisis of faith. In his anger, he nearly does a terrible thing,
plotting a rude prank on the rest of the village. But when his wife
visits him from Hell, he realizes the worth of his own, unique view of
the world and abandons his revenge. Instead, he becomes a wandering
holy man, finally ending a long, colorful life convinced that when he
dies, God will not lie to him. Singer's irony is in leaving the reader
to wonder if Gimpel sees more clearly than most of us.
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