The Characterization of the Fool

     This semester I am taking a class on Jewish Literature which has proven to be a lot of reading, yet I find myself feeling indulgent within the folk tale genre. Recently we began to discuss the character of the fool and how such an image can help personify the mixture of tragedy and humor so often found in literature such as these (the defining of jewish literature is a whole other tangent so I won't refer to the texts readily as such). We first read the essay“On Jewish Storytelling” in What is Jewish Literature, in which Saul Bellow further describes the characterization of Jewish stories as being a combination of both laughter and trembling. Yet in such a combination, Bellow speaks on how the relation of the sentiments to each other can become difficult to determine, thus leading us to a self analysis of the story; moving beyond the jokes or despair, to find a lesson or perhaps an advise. For example, we read I. B. Singer’s “Gimpel the Fool,” in which the character Gimpel faces much taunting and trickery in his life. He is gullible in such a way that those around him often take advantage, leading him to sorrow; such as the time he was told that the Messiah had come and his dead parents had risen, only to be laughed at for wandering the town in search of them... pretty sad, right? 

Bellow comments on the humor of such stories containing the character of the ‘fool’ or perhaps a character with a ‘comic sense of life.’ He argues that the inclusion humor and lightness in a more serious situation allows for reader recognition of parable-like features. The idea is that through such misfortune and the realization that the reality we inhabit is inherently ‘funny’ (in the sense of the defining of the odd misfortunes we face) is, in itself, proof of a God-created world. Its almost a funny idea in itself, that humor and the oddities of our life must be proof that we live in a crafted world; that if we lived in random reality, we may not live such horribly 'funny' lives. Another example of this can be found in Peretz’s “Bontshe Shvayg” as the silent man’s misfortunes, or trembling in the words of Bellow, guide him to a comical scenario in which The Prosecutor (or Satan as he is more commonly known) claims he has no case against the man who never complained, yet in the end Bontshe crafts his own case against himself as he makes a seemingly selfish request when his one granted desire could have been for the aid of the world. Although perhaps seen as a foolish character in the end, such a story Bellows might attribute to his idea of Jewish literature including such a mixture of laughter and trembling as a means to not only recognise the tragedy of such situations, but to then take a form of hope from their retelling as well.

While reading this story, I pitied Bontshe for his life on earth and all that he had to endure (like abuse from his parents and bad luck with finances), yet his story and the relentless misfortune of his life offers a bit of hope to the reader, or at least to me, in the idea that such a character went to be judged at his death and the judge found no case. The prosecutor ends the scene with laughter as he hears the request of Bontshe for bread and butter daily, which is so wholesome and seemingly cute but once you read into it, at the professors request, his wish might not be so great after all. Does the text call us to silence like the foolish character, or is it a call for us to evaluate our idea of pioty as we see misery being rewarded? Ive been thinking about this notion a lot and the idea that we should live a miserable life in hopes of reward seems...well, pretty miserable.