Writing Assignment on

I.B. Singer's "Gimpel the Fool"

 

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Note:  There is a Study Guide to this story.  Be sure you have worked your way through it before undertaking this writing assignment.

You may also want to review the general guidelines on writing assignments.

Write on one of the following topics:

(1)  Subordinate characters can contribute in various ways to the "feel" and theme of the story.  Explain how this works with one of the following. 

• the local rabbi
• Elka
• the Evil One
• the baker's apprentice

The job is to show how the concrete facts serve to raise thematically important issues.  If you wish, you can go on to explain what you take the story to be inviting the reader to think upon these issues. (If you want, you can go further, and explain what your own position is on those issues, and why.  But the main business of your answer must be to explain how the figure you choose to discuss helps determine a careful reader's understanding of what the story is "about.")

(2)  How does Singer suggest that Gimpel may not be the me fool that others take him to be, and he himself believes himself to be? 

• (Obviously you are going to have to address the question of proper standards or criteria for determining what constitutes folly of different sorts, and for ranking the sorts of folly so determined.)

(3)  Consider what Singer himself says in his "Author's Note on His Collected Short Stories":  "I dreamed of a humanism and ethics the basis of which would be a refusal to justify all the evils the Almighty has sent us and is preparing to bestow upon us in the future" (¶4 in our edition). 

• Has Singer in your view moved beyond this position, in his story "Gimpel the Fool,"?  Or is the story best viewed as an expression of it?  Explain.

  Consult the Study Guide to this story before attempting this writing assignment.

  You may also wish to review the general instructions on writing assignments.

  Suggestions are welcome.  Please send your comments to lyman@ksu.edu .

      Contents copyright © 1999 by Lyman A. Baker. 

Permission is granted for non-commercial educational use; all other rights reserved.

  This page last updated 28 March 1999.