Gimpel the Fool
The Pain in a Simple Man’s Life
Primary motives are described as needs that a person must meet in order to survive. The most widely recognized of these motives are the needs for food, water, sleep, air, and regulation of body temperature. However, one motive that is commonly overlooked by society is that of pain avoidance. The undesired pain may be stemmed from either physical or emotional situations or a combination of the two. If one is not prepared to eliminate the source of the pain, then he/she may choose to ignore the painful situation rather than allow him/herself to become upset. The character Gimpel in Isaac Singer’s short story entitled “Gimpel the Fool” centers his entire livelihood on one of his more basic primary motives, the desire to avoid personal pain.
Gimpel is a man who is subjected to human cruelty everyday of his life dealt by the people who surround him. The cruelty is not in the form of physical abuse, yet just as harsh. The people of the only town Gimpel has ever known treat him as if he was a child. And in many ways, Gimpel is a child, for a child is a person who is learning the ways of the world. Gimpel mirrors a child with his naivete and goodness. The people of the town played jokes on him throughout his childhood and his life as an adult. According to Gimpel, “they stuffed my hand full of goat turds” instead “of the raisins they give when a woman’s lying in” (Singer 411). Whereas most people would see aggression as a normal reaction to this sort of trickery, Gimpel chooses to let every trick and every comment go without a word being said. His philosophy is to “Let it pass. So they take advantage of me” (411). This type of action demonstrates that Gimpel chooses to remain s...
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...ing the pain and humiliation that is placed upon him. And in many opinions, as well as my own, Gimpel was an extraordinary character for accomplishing this feat. For according to one critic, “he [Gimpel] is eminently human, recognizing his continuing need for the affection that he managed to wrest from what would have been an intolerable situation for a more conventionally oriented person” (Hadda 294).
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...ter about themselves the way they treated him. The townspeople never really showed any morals (superego) to Gimpel or any respect. All they showed was lack of respect and ridicule.
In Night, he informs his reader of many examples on how a myriad of good people turn into brutes. They see horrific actions, therefore, they cannot help by becoming a brute. They experience their innocent family members being burned alive, innocent people dieing from starvation due to a minuscule proportion of food, and innocent people going to take a shower and not coming out because truly, it is a gas chamber and all f...
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middle of paper ... ... Being free of pain is something that we feel within us to be intrinsically joyful, and no reason can be used to explain further why we wish to be joyful, or in good health. These things we just sense, and even a murderer, who rejects morality on the social level, will do whatever he can to avoid the displeasures of his inner being. His sentiments, if only for himself, remain within him. “One thing can always be a reason, why another is desired.
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