As the textbook notes, Singer wrote in Yiddish and many of his stories take elements of Jewish folktales and update them to fit the conventions of modern short stories. Here, the conventional stereotype of the "little man" is inverted. In some ways Gimpel matches the stereotype – he is persecuted, cuckolded, oppressed – but his inner life and strong faith sustain him, preventing him, as Singer notes (see "What the author/critics say" below) from being a "victim." Set amid the shtetls (Jewish villages) of Eastern Europe, Singer shows that while Jews may live together to escape persecution, a desire to oppress the "Other" is not confined to anti-Semites.
The townspeople's cruelty demonstrates their lack of faith and suggests that savagery and skepticism is their response to anything different. Gimpel’s goodness drives them into a frenzy of cruelty. Yet Gimpel's faith prevails: as the rabbi tells him "It is written, better to be a fool all your days than for one hour to be evil. You are not a fool. They are the fools. For he who causes his neighbor to feel shame loses Paradise himself" (1417). But the difficulty of trying to live a spiritual life in a temporal world is revealed when, as he leaves the rabbi's house, "the rabbi's daughter took me in" (1417). As the rabbi hints, yes he is a fool, but a holy fool, one whose naiveté will receive a spiritual reward. As for the others, their reward has a distinctly bitter, sulfuric quality: on her deathbed, Gimpel imagines Elka saying "I deceived Gimpel. That was the meaning of my brief life" (1424). Scorched and burning in hell, this vision becomes a warning to Gimpel of the fate the townspeople – and anyone without faith – will receive: "I'm paying for it all, Gimpel. They spare you nothing here" (1425).
A kind of religious stoicism dominates Gimpel's vision. As he states, "I'm the type that bears it and says nothing. What's one to do? Shoulders are from God, and burdens too" (1420). Yet instead of hardening his heart, this view makes him wise, seeing in the cruelty of the townspeople the potential for good. Earlier in the story, we see that he knows he is being gulled, but he notes optimistically " I believed them, and I hope at least that did them some good" (1417). Instead of being angered at being taken advantage of – as I would (and have) – he reveals the goodness of his character by seeking the solace of good intentions.
Yet Gimpel's difference, which separates him from the others, is not strictly confined to religious matters. The theme of the holy fool, when considered as a literary device, suggests a more general theme: the fate of an individual in society. Similar to "A&P," we have here a character who wants to remain an individual – though here this desire is much more subtle and based on morality instead of honor – and, like Sammy, Gimpel has to leave the society he is in to pursue his vision.
But before he can pursue his vision, he must, in the manner of many prophets and holy men, be tempted. As in many stories, here we have a character at a climatic moment: when his faith is tested. It is a measure of his realism as a character that he, at first, succumbs to the temptation of the "Spirit of Evil" (1424). At first glance, this temptation involves merely revenge, but the Spirit is after larger game: Gimpel's soul. When Gimpel voices his concern about "the judgment in the world to come," the Spirit sneers, "There is no world . . . There is no God either" (1424-25). Gimpel's first impulse is to try and crush the devil, but, "answer[ing] the call of nature," he sinks to the level of the townspeople. That seemingly innocuous line, " answer[ing] the call of nature," illuminates the distinction between Gimpel and the others, and between faith and skepticism. Revenge seems the "natural" course for Gimpel to take. It requires an effort, a conscious decision to forswear revenge; only by rejecting human "nature" – which in this case involves seeking revenge by urinating in the dough – and retaining his individuality can he remain true to his god. This difference between himself and others takes on a logical, and thus even more conscious air, by Elka's admonishment in his dream vision: "Because I was false is everything false too?" (1425). She exposes the "eye for an eye" idea of revenge as hollow by setting up a false tautology: if A = B, than is everything B? The story asks the question, "because some lack faith, should everyone lack faith?"
Elka's part in this drama seems vaguely archetypal. Literally, a Madonna/whore figure, she represents the saving nature of grace and the possibilities of redemption. Elka's and Gimpel's fates run parallel: when Gimpel loses faith, she appears in a dream with a black face, apparently suffering for her sins (1425). But as Gimpel regains his faith, and especially as it grows in his travels, her face appears "shining and her eyes are as radiant as the eyes of a saint" (1426). She becomes a part of his trials on earth, a test of his spirituality. His all-consuming love for her, "I adored her every word" (though tempered with realism, "She gave me bloody wounds though" [1420]), symbolize his relationship with God. As he states later in the story, after Elka has been unfaithful to him several times, "Today it's your wife you don't believe; tomorrow it's God Himself you won't take stock in" (1422). True soul-mates, his love for her, despite a host of difficulties and temptations, provides a sure measure of his humanity and spirituality. Later, as a reward for his devotion, Elka acts as medium between this world and the next, coming to his aid at a crucial moment and literally saving his soul. In a sense, his love and affection towards Elka is finally rewarded. Without her timely intervention, his realization that he is becoming cruel and vindictive -- in other words, just like the townspeople -- might not have occurred and he might have succumbed to the devil and lost his faith.
Gimpel's spiritual view of life is revealed in his avowal at the end of the story that "No doubt the world is entirely an imaginary world, but once removed from the true world (1426). For Gimpel, the physical world – the world we live in – is "imaginary," a fleeting vision that needs to be endured until the "true world" – the spiritual level – can be attained. The paradox of this vision is part of Gimpel's individualism: he views the world and all it contains from his own perspective, remaining true to his own beliefs. In his final wanderings, he discovers the truth of his beliefs; that life is not always what it appears to be and that the strange and miraculous are possible on earth – it only takes faith, a message in accord with both secular and sacred interpretations of life.
© 2000 David Bordelon
What the author/critics say:
Interviewers: Now what about this folk element in your work? What use do you feel you are making of it, and how do you regard the so-called demonic trait?
But let me come back to the literary reason for my use of the demonic and supernatural. First, it helps me to express myself. For example, by using Satan or a demon as a symbol, one can compress a great many things. It's a kind of spiritual stenography. It gives me more freedom. For another thing, the demons and Satan represent to me, in a sense, the ways of the world. Instead of saying this is the way things happen, I will say, this is the way demons behave. Demons symbolize the world for me, and by that I mean human beings and human behavior; and since I really believe in their existence – that is, not only symbolically bus substantively – it is easy to see how this kind of literary style was born. (qtd. in Blocker and Elman 23)
Blocker, Joel and Richard Elman. "An Interview with Isaac
Bashevis Singer." Critical View of Isaac Bashevis
Singer. Ed. Irving Malm. New York: NYUP, 1969. 3-26
"the world [Singer] recoils from is the world of the market place, of human passions, of vain ambitions, of misguided aspirations, and of all the human relationships which result from them. This is the world of Gimpel the Fool, where the simple and the sensitive are gulled, deprived, humiliated, and despised. It is the world in which the poverty of Frampol distorts the perspective of its people."
Eisenberg. J. A. "Isaac Bashevis Singer: Passionate Primitive
or Pious Puritan?" in Critical Views of Isaac Bashevis
Singer. Ed. Irving Malin. New York: NYUP, 1969. 48-67.
From your collection Spinoza of Market Street, I get the impression that there are two broad philosophical areas into which the stories can be divided. . . . I got the feeling that either supernatural forces such as imps or devils are enticing man into wrong doing and then he is punished, or he stoically accepts the natural order, suffers, and does nothing to improve his condition. In either case, it seems that your characters are not so much conscious agents as expressions. They seem to become somewhat static.
No, it is not completely so, because I believe, at least consciously, in free will. Everyone of us has free will. The only thing is that free will is a rare gift and we get very little of it. In the stories where I describe human misery, I describe cases where a man did not make use of his free will and because of this you have a feeling that the imp and satan and the devil are victorious. I always believe that there is no power which can curb a man from using this rare gift if he really wants to. Even though you will see in my works many stories where I make man seem like a victim of other powers, I don't believe in that.
Your characters have the will to repulse the forces if they make that choice?
Yes. They have the will and in some of my stories you will see that they actually do so. This war between God and Satan means actually the war between free will and compulsion. From the moment man is born, he is compelled, yet at the same time he is given the free will to fight compulsion.
You would say that when a man uses free will, he will use it to rise above into the ethical, that his compulsion may be toward evil but he uses his will to fight evil?
Yes, to my mind this is actually the essence of religion. There is not such a thing as a fatalist religion. Be it Judaism or Christianity or Buddhism, they all teach you that we are always given a choice. Even when it seems to a human being that he has no choice, he still has some choice. When a man is in prison, naturally he has no choice - he cannot leave the prison. He cannot break the walls, but he can always be at one wall or another wall - he can be quiet or he can be hysterical. He can be a good prisoner or a bad prisoner.
He can reconcile himself to his position?
Yes. It is very interesting that in Europe there does not exist the fact that one gets time off for good behavior, which means that those who made the laws in this country knew that even a man in prison can behave well or badly, and he is rewarded and punished accordingly. This is a very good idea because it means that man has not lost his will completely even though he is in prison. (qtd. in Marshall Breger and Bob Barnhart 39-41)
Berger, Marshall and Bob Barnhart. "A Conversation with Isaac Bashevis Singer." Critical View of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Ed. Irving Malm. New York: NYUP, 1969.27-43.