Foolishness
The primary theme of the story is the nature of foolishness. Gimpel is considered a "fool" because he is gullible and trusting, beginning as early as his school days when children would lie to him about what was happening in the town. As he gets older, Gimpel's foolishness extends to his own life, when he believes all of his children to be his even though his wife, Elka, is consistently unfaithful. However, readers might notice that Gimpel's perceived foolishness belies his sense of self-awareness. He acknowledges throughout the story that the townspeople need him to entertain themselves and that he is, however unfair and cruel it may be, a casualty of their amusement. Similarly, he decides to believe Elka's lies only after he suffers from missing her and the babies, rendering his foolishness a deliberate choice. In this way, the story questions whether foolishness is actually an undesirable quality, suggesting through Gimpel's character that trust and gullibility introduce more possibility to one's life.
The Literary Tradition
The term "fool," which usually denotes imbecility or idiocy, stems from a precise social role that emerged in antiquity and continued through the English Renaissance. A "fool," also known as a "jester," would serve the family of a particular monarch or nobleman by providing entertainment to guests. When drama became a popular form of entertainment in Elizabethan England, playwrights – most notably William Shakespeare – often included "fool" characters to introduce comic relief to otherwise tragic plays. However, critical discourse has shown that these characters – clowns, fools, and jesters – are frequently wiser than their stations allow them to act. By telling the story of a perceived "fool," Singer engages with this rich literary tradition. Like the "fools" of early modern drama, Gimpel is knowledgeable about the entertainment utility he serves for his community and chooses to exude "foolishness" as a way of maintaining the status quo.
Community
Gimpel's foolishness is not merely an attribute that affects his personal life. On the contrary, it is his surrounding community in Frampol that bestows the nickname "Gimpel the Fool" on him in the first place. The town – located in Poland, where Singer is originally from – is a close-knit Jewish community replete with gossip and judgmental characters. The story suggests that Gimpel's foolishness is born not of himself but rather of his community: they determine early on that Gimpel's trusting nature is a form of entertainment for everyone else. In this way, the story showcases how derogatory descriptions like "foolishness" are not inherent parts of one's nature, but instead are created and determined by those around them. This notion is especially important for the end of the story when Gimpel finally embraces his foolishness but must leave Frampol to do so.
Storytelling
By the end of "Gimpel the Fool," Gimpel's foolishness becomes a signifier of storytelling. He leaves Frampol to travel the world as a beggar and tell people stories, suggesting, on the one hand, that he begins to treat others as if they were "fools" too. On the other hand, Gimpel's penchant for storytelling embraces foolishness as a prerequisite for one's imagination, creativity, and sense of possibility: rather than attempt to discern and propagate the "truth" about things, Gimpel spreads his own fictions. Notably, he does not tell stories out of cruelty to those listening but rather does so because "no doubt the world is entirely an imaginary world" (1003).
