wise fool essay

The Wisdom of the Fool

An essay by trevor stone, june 1995, freshman year, new vista high school.

wisdom n. 1. the quality of being wise, the power of judging rightly and following the soundest course of action, based on knowledge, experience, understanding, etc.; good judgment; discretion; sagacity. 2. learning; knowledge, erudition: as, the wisdom of the ages. 3. wise discourse or teaching, [Rare], a wise saying, action, etc.

wise adj. 1. having or showing good judgment; sagacious; prudent; discreet. 2. prompted by wisdom; judicious; sound: as, a wise saying, wise action. 3. informed: as, none the wiser. 4. learned; erudite. 5. shrewd; crafty; cunning. 6. [Obs, or Dial.]. having knowledge of black magic, etc.

fool n. 1. a person with little or no judgment, common sense, wisdom, etc.; silly person; simpleton. 2. a man formerly kept in the household of a nobleman or king to entertain by acting as a clown; professional jester. 3. a victim of a joke or trick; dupe.

wisdom, wiseness, sageness, etc. adj.; sapience, sagacity, etc. above, good or sound understanding; rationality; reason. reasonableness; sense, good ~ , common or plain sense, horse sense [coll., U.S.]. due sense of; judgment, good or sound perception of reasoning, soundness of judgment, good or sound judgment, judiciousness; long head [coll.], longheadedness; solidity, depth, profundity; enlargement of mind, enlarged views

fool, tomfool, precious fool, ninny, ninny hammer, mutt, boob, boob, chump, sap, prize sap, saphead, loony, looby, hoddy-doddy, noddy, tomnoddy, tommy noddy, nonny, noodle, doodle, nizy, gabby, dizzard, jobbernowl, nincompoop, witling, badaud, jerk, zany, daw, flat, put, stick, stock, sop, numps, tony, spoony, goose, buzzard, owl, donkey, ass, asshead; colt, calf, mooncalf, bull calf, sill, silly, silly ass, soft, softy, softhead; sot; stupid, stupid head, dolt, dunce, duffer, doit, niais, dummy or dumby; dumbhead, dumbbell, dumb-bunny; dullard, dully, dullhead, dunderpate, dunderhead, block, blockhead, woodenhead, squarehead, bonehead, solid ivory, numskull, thickhead, thickskull, thickwit, lunkhead, chucklehead, chowderhead, jolthead, jolterhead, muttonhead, loggerhead, beetlehead, grosshead, noodlehead, cabbagehead, pumpkin head, fathead, blubberhead, doughhead, bakehead, bullhead, blunderhead; clod, clodpole or clotpole, clodpoll or clotpoll, clodpate or clotpate; oaf, lout, loon, lown, lubber, swab, sawney, galoot, gowk, gawk, gawky, lummox, rube, yokel, clodhopper; shallowbrain, shallowpate; simp, simpleton, Simple Simon, idiot, driveling idiot, imbecile, moron, changeling, nitwit, dimwit, half-wit, lackwit, lack-brain; natural, natural idiot, born fool, natural-born fool; scatterbrain or scatterbrains, shatterbrain, shatterpate, rattlebrain, rattlehead, rattlepate; harebrain, featherbrain; giddybrain, giddyhead, diddypate; dizzy, dizzy dame; dotard "the sickly dotard," dote; driveler, babbler, radoteur; senile, old fogy, old wife or woman, crone, grandmother, henhussy, cotquean, betty, cot betty; childish person, child, mere child, baby, infant, innocent

Day after day, alone on a hill, the man with the foolish grin is keeping perfectly still. But nobody wants to know him, they can see that he's just a fool and he never gives an answer. But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down and the eyes in his head see the world spinning round. Well on the way, head in a cloud, the man of a thousand voices talking perfectly loud. But nobody ever hears him or the sound he appears to make and he never seems to notice. But the fool on the hill sees the sun going down and the eyes in his head see the world spinning round. He never listens to them, he knows that they're the fools. They don't like him. The fool on the hill sees the sun going down and the eyes in his head see the world spinning round. -- The Beatles "The Fool on the Hill"

Literary Blueprints: The Wise Fool

Painting of a boy and an older man wearing medieval clothing and lying next to a grassy knoll

After meeting Gothic characters the Byronic Hero and the Mad Woman , the time has come to visit periods before Romanticism in discovering a popular character known as The Wise Fool.

Origin Story: The idea of the Wise Fool is somewhat hard to trace. Unlike some other character types, he does not have a clear beginning, but rather a few key moments in literary history where he pops up in some form. Greek and Roman literature both contain examples of the Wise Fool, who often appears as a servant who tricks his master.

Looking at Biblical origins, the idea of the Fool is not someone who is lacking in intelligence, but someone who is a non-believer. The pairing of wisdom and folly perhaps originates in the book of Proverbs, in this case as a set of women, one with worth beyond all things (Wisdom) and one sent to lead men astray (Folly). These foils appear throughout Medieval literature in works such as Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee .

The idea of the Fool was more fully developed during the Middle Ages, although he wisdom will come with the Renaissance. The paradox of the Wise Fool, however, does not fully emerge until the Tudor period, most famously in Shakespeare’s King Lear where his Fool is the true source of wisdom in the play.

Characteristics: The Wise Fool is often literally a fool or jester—a comic character who is present for entertainment rather than intellect. Of course, the character has developed beyond those restrictions. Whatever his occupation, the Wise Fool is an outsider who is not valued for his (or her) intellect. It is there that the Fool is able to source his power. By being free from the standards of society, an outsider in essence, the Fool can observe and comment with few limitations, including mocking the social elite. But, like the cursed Greek prophet Cassandra, the truth of the Fool’s words may be missed by characters who dismiss them as worthless. His wisdom stems not from acquired knowledge but from common sense and insight. In modern literature, the Fool may suffer from some mental handicap which causes him to be perceived as unintelligent; however, he will have an innate gift that fuels his wisdom. The term Idiot Savant may be applied in this case. The Wise Fool can sometimes merge with the Trickster.

Famous Faces: Beginning with the Greeks, Philippus in Xenophon’s Symposium and Thersites in Homer’s Iliad both fill the role of the Wise fool. Shakespeare loved a Wise Fool, as evidenced by Twelfth Night’s Feste and the infamous Falstaff ( The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV ). Lear ’s Fool is so important to this Blueprint that Christopher Moore dedicated two books ( Fool and The Serpent of Venice ) to the character whom he names Pocket. John Steinbeck plays with the idea of the Idiot Savant with Of Mice and Men’s Lenny. Phillipa Gregory wrote a female Wise Fool in The Queen’s Fool . Harry Potter fans might recognize Luna Lovegood as a Wise Fool, though some argue Ron Weasley better defines the characteristics.

About Author

Amber Kelly is a Texas based writer and literature/history professor at Howard College, where she is also dean of general studies. Her recent publications include The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Toasted Cheese, Kansas City Voices, East Coast Literary Review, Copperfield Review, Necessary Fiction, The Review Review, and Brain, Child. An alumnus of New York University and Sul Ross, she enjoys the writings of Margaret Atwood, roasted corn salsa, and punk band t-shirts. She is working on her first novel. Follow her @AKellyLady.

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Analysis of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Gimpel the Fool

Analysis of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Gimpel the Fool

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on May 25, 2021

Widely regarded as Isaac Bashevis Singer’s masterpiece as well as one of his most frequently anthologized stories, the Yiddish version of “Gimpel the Fool” appeared in the Jewish Daily Forward (1953) before SAUL BELLOW translated it into English for publication in the Partisan Review (1957). Although set in Singer’s native Poland, “Gimpel the Fool” continues to enjoy international success because of Reb Gimpel, its universally sympathetic character. Readers have not only seen Gimpel as the cuckolded husband whose wife makes him into a fool but also as an innocent and childlike naïf whose quest for truth makes him into an Everyman; a little man, or a schlemiel; a scapegoat, a shaman, a trickster, and the archetypical figure of “the wandering Jew” (Siegel 170). The devout Gimpel questions and confronts his faith in God and finds that, in the long run, it sustains him.

The story opens as Gimpel, the first-person narrator, explains that ever since childhood he has been the butt of the town jokes, when he was called “imbecile, donkey, flax-head, dope, glump, ninny, and fool. The last name stuck” (26). The town of Frampol looks to Reb Gimpel for entertainment, telling him outrageous lies and playing humiliating tricks on him. Stung too often, he at one point resolves to believe nothing that the townspeople tell him, but that technique serves only to confuse him. When Gimpel seeks advice from the rabbi, the one sane voice in his life, the rabbi responds, “Better to be a fool all your days than for one hour to be evil. You are not a fool. They are the fools” (27). Gimpel continues to be fooled until he actually marries Elke, the pregnant town prostitute: “I realized I was going to be rooked,” he tells us, but “what did I stand to lose?” (28).

Isaac Bashevis Singer/Chuck Fishman

He stands to lose a great deal, of course, as he loves not wisely but too well: Despite Elke’s giving him “bloody wounds,” he “adored her every word” (30). When her baby is born, the townsfolk make fun of Gimpel, but he loves the child “madly, and he loved me too” (29). Gimpel loves children and animals— and Elke—with little or no reservation. He is the town baker, and his association with bread, the source of human sustenance, aligns him with life, spirituality, and optimism; even when he discovers a man in bed with his wife, his anger is short-lived (“You can’t live without errors” [31]), and he withdraws his request for a divorce. In denial of his wife’s infidelity—even after discovering his apprentice in her bed—he lives equably with her for 20 years. In the critic and scholar Alfred Kazin’s words, even after learning of Elke’s adultery, he “ignores his own dignity for the sake of others” (61).

It is only with her deathbed confession that he is not the father of any of their children that Gimpel succumbs to the Evil Spirit, who urges him to take revenge on the entire town that has conspired against him. Persuaded that there is no God and no afterlife, he agrees to contaminate all his bread with buckets of urine so that the townsfolk of Frampol will eat “filth” (34). Just in time, Elke appears to him in a dream: “You fool! Because I was false is everything false too? . . . I’m paying for it all, Gimpel. They spare you nothing here” (34). Realizing the irretrievable act he nearly committed, the baker believes that God is helping him, and he buries the ruined bread in the frozen earth. When people ask where he is going, he replies, “Into the world.”

Gimpel wanders for the rest of his life, exchanging stories and concluding that truth is as strange as, if not stranger than, fiction: “I understood that there were really no lies. Whatever doesn’t really happen is dreamed at night. It happens to one if it doesn’t happen to another, tomorrow if not today, or a century hence if not next year” (35). And so he becomes a storyteller, still longing for the time he can rejoin Elke and living with the belief that “the world is entirely an imaginary world, but it is only once removed from the true world” (35). Indeed, at the end he becomes a prophet, a visionary, “a shaman of sorts, someone who mediates between worlds” (Drunker 35). Living to a ripe white-haired old age, Gimpel has gained infinite wisdom and has eluded evil with his belief in goodness still intact.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Allentuck, Marcia, ed. The Achievement of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969. Buber, Martin. “The Master of Prayer.” In The Tales of Rabbi Nachman, retold by Martin Buber. New York: Horizon Press, 1956. Clasby, Nancy Tenfelde. “Gimpel’s Wisdom: I. B. Singer’s Vision of the ‘True World.’ ” Studies in American Jewish Literature 15 (1996): 90–98. Drucker, Sally Ann. “I. B. Singer’s Two Holy Fools.” Yiddish 8, no. 2 (1992): pp. 35–39. Farrell Lee, Grace. From Exile to Redemption: The Fiction of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987. Fraustino, Daniel V. “Gimpel the Fool: Singer’s Debt to the Romantics.” Studies in Short Fiction 22, no. 2 (Spring 1985): 228–231. Friedman, Lawrence S. Understanding Isaac Bashevis Singer. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Grebstein, Sheldon. “Singer’s Shrewd ‘Gimpel’: Bread and Childbirth.” In Recovering the Canon: Essays on Isaac Bashevis Singer, edited by David Neal Miller, 58–65. Leiden: Brill, 1986. Hennings, Thomas. “Singer’s ‘Gimpel the Fool’ and the Book of Hosea.” Journal of Narrative Technique 13 (Winter 1983): 11–19. Howe, Irving. “I. B. Singer.” In Critical Views of Isaac Bashevis Singer, edited by Irving Malin, 100–120. New York: New York University Press, 1969. Kazin, Alfred. “The Saint as Schlemiel.” In Critical Essays on Isaac Bashevis Singer, edited by Grace Farrell, 61–65. New York: G. K. Hall, 1996. Malin, Irving, ed. Critical Views of Isaac Bashevis Singer. New York: New York University Press, 1969. Miller, David Neal, ed. Recovering the Canon: Essays on Isaac Bashevis Singer. Leiden: Brill, 1986. Pinsker, Sanford. The Schlemiel as Metaphor. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971. Radin, Paul. The Trickster: A Study in American Indian Mythology. New York: Philosophical Library, 1956. Sholem, Gershom. Kabbalah. New York: NAL, 1978. ———. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schocken Books, 1961. Siegel, Ben, ed. Critical Essays on Isaac Bashevis Singer. New York: G. K. Hall, 1996. Siegel, Paul N. “Gimpel and the Archetype of the Wise Fool.” In The Achievement of Isaac Bashevis Singer, edited by Marcia Allentuck, 159–174. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969. Singer, Isaac Bashevis. “Gimpel the Fool.” In Contemporary American Literature, edited by George Perkins and Barbara Perkins. New York: Random House, 1988. ———. “Gimpel the Fool.” In A Treasury of Yiddish Stories. Translated by Saul Bellow and edited by Irving Howe and Eliezer Greenberg. New York: Schocken, 1973. Wisse, Ruth. The Schlemiel as Modern Hero. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1971.

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English literature essays.

Shakespeare: Twelfth Night

Wit, and't be thy will, put me into good fooling! Those wits that think they have thee do very oft prove fools; and I that am sure I lack thee may pass for a wise man. For what says Quinapalus? 'Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.'

Shakespeare's plays were written to be performed to an audience from different social classes and of varying levels of intellect. Thus they contain down-to-earth characters who appeal to the working classes, side-by-side with complexities of plot which would satisfy the appetites of the aristocrats among the audience. His contemporary status is different, and Shakespeare's plays have become a symbol of culture and education, being widely used as a subject for academic study and literary criticism. A close critical analysis of Twelfth Night can reveal how Shakespeare manipulates the form, structure, and language to contribute to the meaning of his plays.

Through the form of dialogue Shakespeare conveys the relationship between characters. For example, the friendship and understanding between Olivia, and her servant Feste, the clown, is shown in their dialogue in Act 1, Scene 5. In this scene Shakespeare shows that both characters are intellectuals by constructing their colloquy in prose.

Characterising Feste, Shakespeare gives him the aphorism,

This line illustrates the clown's acumen; and is a delightful example of the way in which he uses language, as well as form to manifest Feste's character. Far from being a fool, the clown is erudite and sagely and able to present the audience with a higher knowledge of the plot than that presented by the other characters in the play. This witty remark is a clear indication of his aloofness from the events of the play. He can look upon the unfolding scenario with the detachment of an outsider due to his minimal involvement with the action. Feste is a roaming entertainer who has the advantage of not having to take sides; he is an observer not a participant.

Another illustration of the way in which Shakespeare uses form to give meaning is in the dialogue between Viola and the Duke Orsino in Act 2 scene 4, where one line of iambic pentameter is frequently shared by the two characters. For example:

The merging of the characters' half-lines into one whole line is cleverly used by Shakespeare to show that the two characters are destined to be together. This technique of linking lines, which Shakespeare uses elsewhere, for example in Romeo and Juliet , shows the balance that the two characters provide for each other. This is an example of how he uses the form of language to aid the actors in portraying the characters in the way he intends.

The structure of a Shakespeare play also contributes to its meaning. In most of his plays there is a pattern consisting of three main sections:

Exposition - establishing the main character relationships in a situation involving a conflict.

Development - building up the dramatic tension and moving the conflict established to its climax. (In Twelfth Night , increasing complications resulting from love, and mistaken identity.)

Denouement - resolution of the conflict and re-establishing some form of equilibrium. (In Twelfth Night , the realisation of the disguises and the pairing up of the characters.)

The scenes of Twelfth Night are carefully woven together in order to create tension and humour, and to prepare us, almost subconsciously, for what is going to happen. We are given fragments of manageable information throughout the play so that when the complex plot unfolds we understand it by piecing together all the information given to us in previous scenes. For example, to return to the Duke and Viola, the audience is aware of the fact that she is disguised as a man, so understands more than the Duke himself does as he struggles with his feelings, believing he is falling in love with a man.

The audience is fed important information in Act 2 Scene 1 when Antonio and Sebastian meet and converse:

Through these lines Shakespeare lets the audience in on the fact that Sebastian is alive, and that he believes his sister Viola to be dead, and that the two resemble one another in appearance. We also see how Sebastian feels for his sister as he talks about her so passionately. This is an important part of the development stage of the play as it prepares us for the role which mistaken identity will play in the plot, and sets up the potential for dramatic irony.

Another scene which prepares us for dramatic irony is when Maria, Sir Andrew, and Sir Toby write the letter to Malvolio, under the pretence that it is from Olivia. As we the audience are aware of this deception it sets up the dramatic irony, because Malvolio himself is not aware of it when he finds and reads the letter during Act 2, Scene 5. Presuming the letter is for him, and from Olivia, he proceeds to embarrass himself.

The structure in which many subplots run through the play can be described as 'River Action'; actions not closely linked are moving in parallel to be integrated at the end of the play. This contrasts to the single or episodic action in Macbeth , or the mirror action in King Lear where there is both a main and a sub-plot present. Shakespeare has used this structural technique to create both humour and tension. The subplots also pick up on the themes of love and mistaken identities, preparing us for the part those themes will play in the main plot.

Shakespeare also supports the events and actions in the play through language, using it to convey to the audience the feelings and thoughts of the characters as they respond to events.

Language is used first and foremost for the purpose of conveying a difference in feelings or attitudes in different situations. For example Malvolio speaks in prose at the beginning of the play, showing intelligence, but near the end he speaks in verse;

Here Shakespeare has distorted the rhythm so that it cannot fit the rule of iambic pentameter, thus showing that Malvolio is feeling strong emotion. His confusion and humiliation becomes apparent through the breathless manner in which he speaks.

In contrast, we have these smoothly-flowing lines from Orsino:

By using iambic pentameter here Shakespeare defines Orsino's character to a certain degree. Iambic pentameter shows control and yet the emphasis here is on the instability and the intensity of his love for Olivia. The audience cannot help but feel pity towards his self-induced love sickness, but at the same time the situation provokes hilarity, as he has never actually met Olivia. This leads us to believe he is 'in love with being in love'.

Characters are there to instigate an emotional reaction from the audience, and when considering the characters of a Shakespeare play we may find as much characterisation as in a novel, but we must also consider that the characters have a mechanical function in the scheme of the play as a whole. It can help to think of them as vehicles to carry ideas or themes; for example Orsino introduces the theme of love.

The diction Shakespeare gives to his characters contributes to their characterisation. He gives characters with more intelligence a large vocabulary, where feeble-minded characters are more limited. Evidence of this in Twelfth Night is perhaps not as obvious as in other plays such as The Tempest , where Caliban has a very limited vocabulary, and struggles to find words. But characteristics of language such as imagery, metaphors, vocabulary and syntax used by Malvolio contrast for example with those used by the Clown. Although both characters are of a higher intelligence, the language chosen for each is very different;

Feste, the Clown, often plays with words, uses puns and aphorisms.

He proves to be intelligent in that he is witty and wise. He also proves to be quite mysterious, seeming to know more than most, but still being observant and quiet.

Malvolio is more well-spoken than witty, but he is more pompous and arrogant.

That final line from Malvolio's is there to make the audience pity him. By using the metaphor of 'the whole pack of you' an image is immediately created of a group surrounding him. The metaphor describes how he has been made a fool of by all of them, and also signifies his isolation from the rest of the cast and how he has become a loose end of the play, as everybody else has found love or companionship with another person in the play.

After analysing the way in which Shakespeare uses form, structure and language to shape meaning I have come to the conclusion that we are not consciously aware of these techniques when we are the audience. Directors and actors may take these factors into consideration when performing a play, to assist in conveying meaning to the audience. Different directors may interpret the text in different ways, but the play should be performed in such a way that subtle clues help the audience receive messages and understand the complexity of the developing plot, so that we are not obliged to be continually struggling to interpret the text for ourselves.

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The Pastoral Implications of Wise and Foolish Speech in the Book of Proverbs

More By Eric Ortlund

This article is written in love and admiration for pastors in North America. It is also written in brotherly concern because pastors in our culture are frequently subjected to gossip, slander, and malicious speech. You probably do not have to attend church meetings for very long before witnessing this for yourself. I remember speaking with a friend who attended a church meeting that quickly turned ugly. His comment to me, as a new Christian, was, “My honeymoon in the church was over.” I doubt any of my readers will have trouble imagining what that meeting was like for my friend. While this is naturally a problem for any church in any age, certain tendencies in our culture make it an especially glaring one—and the Internet only makes things worse. I would like to think through the issue of foolish speech in a pastoral context by turning to the book of Proverbs because this book contains rich resources for both understanding and interpreting the roots of foolish speech and responding to it in a faithful way.

I would like to argue that, in the book of Proverbs, one cannot argue with a fool without making things worse. The wise person instead trusts the Lord to intervene by silencing and stopping foolish speech and vindicating those who trust him. I realize this conclusion may seem extreme. In order to recommend it, this article briefly sketches how the major characters in Proverbs speak and examines how the wise respond (or do not respond) to foolish speech. Then it turn to the NT, focusing on Paul’s directions to how Timothy and Titus should speak in different situations, as well as Paul’s presentation of Christ as the wisdom of God in 1 Cor 1. The essay closes by applying the wise speech of Proverbs to everyday-ministry settings.

1. Major Characters in Proverbs: The Simple, the Fool, and the Wise Man

The first major character in Proverbs is the simpleton, most often identified with the son or the youth in the book. The book of Proverbs portrays a pious Israelite father, guided by Solomon, teaching his son how to engage successfully in the complex adventure called “life.” The son or youth is classified as “simple” (פֶּתִי) in the sense of being naïve about how life works and easily fooled (see Prov 1:4). While not morally wrong in itself, the youth’s simplicity is dangerous because it is susceptible to influence from either wisdom or folly (9:4-6, 16). If not left behind, the youth will suffer the most terrifying consequences (1:22, 31). Although more could be said about this character, it turns out that the simple youth does not have much to say in Proverbs—he is rather called on to listen quietly to the wise instruction of the father.

For this reason, we turn to the two other major characters in the book: the righteous-wise and the wicked-fool. [1] In making this distinction, I am not ignoring how Proverbs uses a number of words are for different kinds of people. For instance, לֵץ (“scoffer”) seems to denote a hardened cynic for whom there is the least hope of change. [2] Nevertheless, it is fair to make a broad distinction between two basic kinds of people in Proverbs: the righteous and the wicked, the wise and the foolish. The entire book of Proverbs is an appeal to the son to leave behind his simplicity and join the ranks of the righteous-wise by describing the life (and especially the speech) of these people and the blessed consequences that meet them under YHWH’s hand. [3]

The righteous-wise can be defined, first, as those who “do right by” God and neighbor (1:3, 2:9, 12:17, 21:21, etc.). They discharge all relational obligations, doing what is right in the complex junctures to which every relationship is subject. This righteousness should not be understood only in the sense of fairness or balance, but more extremely as going “over the top” to do as much as possible to enhance the life of one’s neighbor. “The righteous are willing to disadvantage themselves to advantage the community; the wicked are willing to disadvantage the community to advantage themselves.” [4] Second, this category of people are “wise” in the sense of being skilled at engaging with the complex order God has set up in creation, and especially in relationships (1:2-7). This category of people is consistently portrayed as morally upright and insightful about how life and relationships work.

By contrast, the wicked-fool privileges self over neighbor. His wickedness consists in working for his own advantage to the detriment of others. His folly is similarly seen in the lack of skill with which he lives, despite the disastrous consequences to himself and others. Furthermore, this type of person consistently refuses to listen to instruction or rebuke or advice. The fool is someone who is incorrigibly certain he knows how life works, no matter how he is warned (1:7, 22; 12:15, 15:5). They are the ones who are wise in their own eyes (3:5-8). In contrast, the wise are receptive, open, and listening to wisdom (1:7-8, 2:1-4, 10:8, etc.), even loving rebuke (9:8).

How do these two groups of people talk? Proverbs spends no small amount of space portraying wise and foolish speech.

2. Foolish Speech in Proverbs

We can broadly summarize foolish speech in two ways.

2.1. Constant First, there is a lot of it: the fool is always talking. Instead of pondering how he should answer, his mouth pours forth wicked things (Prov 15:28; cf. 15:2). He answers before he listens (18:13). He gets involved in arguments not his own (26:17). This kind of person is completely unrestrained: cross him and he explodes (12:16; 29:11). He cannot keep another’s secret (11:13; 12:23). He abuses people he dislikes (11:12) [5] and criticizes them to others (10:18). Instead of keeping quiet, his rash words are sword-thrusts (12:18) that spark arguments with others (15:18).

The first-time reader of Proverbs might conclude at this point that people who are naturally outgoing and talkative are closer to folly than those with a quieter personality. Proverbs does contain some sober warnings about talking a lot: “in many words, sin is not lacking” (10:19); “the one guarding his lips guards his life” (13:3). But the biblical portrayal of the fool’s unrestrained speech locates its source elsewhere: the fool talks so much because he is someone who has to be right. He will not stop arguing (20:3). If you get into an argument with the fool, instead of giving you the benefit of the doubt and working with you toward a resolution, “he only rages and laughs, and there is no quiet” (29:9). From the very first chapter of Proverbs, gaining wisdom means listening to those wiser than you; one cannot become wise without being receptive. An essential characteristic of the fool is that he will not do so, instead despising יסר, “fatherly instruction” (1:7, 5:23, 10:17, 12:1, 13:1; cf. also the understatement for effect in 15:12). Refusing to accept instruction in how life works, the fool is interested only in airing his own opinion (18:2).

And there is a sense in which the fool cannot accept such instruction. The fool’s unwise speech is constitutional: he does not know how to say anything else. The mouths of the wicked know only what is perverse (10:32); when a fool decides to instruct someone, all he can dispense is more folly (16:22). Truths that would otherwise help others dangle like crippled legs in his mouth (26:7; cf. 1:22, 23; 13:19; 17:10; 24:7; 27:22).

Continue reading at Themelios , an international evangelical theological journal that expounds and defends the historic Christian faith. It is published three times per year by The Gospel Coalition.

[1] I use hyphenated terms for these two groups because Proverbs refers to righteousness (צְדָקָה) and wickedness (רֶשַׁע) almost as frequently as it does to wisdom and folly; the book cannot invoke wisdom terms without also referring to moral ones. For instance, Proverbs uses the חכם root (“be wise”) 55 times, while it refers to the צָדִּיק (“the righteous”) 66 times. Similarly, the two most common words for “fool,” אְֶוִיל and כְּסִיל, combine to occur 76 times (27 and 49 times, respectively), while the רשׁע root (“be wicked”) occurs 83 times. While “righteousness” and “wisdom” are not synonymous (nor are “wickedness” and “foolishness”), in Proverbs, one cannot be wise without being righteous, and vice-versa. For this reason, I will refer sometimes to “the righteous-wise” and sometimes just “the wise,” but the same group of people is intended by both designations. The same is true of “the wicked-fools” and “fools.”

[2] See Bruce Waltke, Proverbs 1-15 (NICOT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 93-116, and Michael Fox, Proverbs 1-9 (AB 18A; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 28-43, for an extremely helpful discussions of the nuances of different terms used for wisdom and folly.

[3] In speaking this way, of course, I am taking a book that was edited in several stages as a coherent, unified whole (for indications of redactional layers, see 25:1; 30:1; and 31:1; recall also the connection between the Instruction of Amenemope and Prov 22:17-23:11). Doing so is unproblematic in my opinion, for whatever differences one might detect in different parts of the book, no one editorial layer contradicts or criticizes the whole. A consistency in the book is unmistakable even within the diversity of thought that wisdom literature allowed and perhaps even encouraged.

[4] Waltke, Proverbs 1-15 , 97.

[5] When the second clause of this verse says that the man of understanding keeps silent, it implies that the third party in question is not worthy of praise. In other words, the fool who despises his companion is not necessarily saying false things. His folly consists in speaking when he should keep quiet.

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

Eric Ortlund is husband to Erin and father to Kate and Will. He studied Old Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School and New College in Edinburgh and currently serves as associate professor of Old Testament at Briercrest College and Seminary in Caronport, Saskatchewan, in Canada. He blogs regularly at Scatterings .

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Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership pp 107–110 Cite as

The Wise Fool

Manfred F. R. Kets de Vries 2
First Online: 11 October 2018

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Andrew was an enigma. His behavior was untraditional, to say the least. It was difficult to figure out what he was all about – whether he was serious, or just clowning around. You never knew what to expect from him. Some thought he was a real pain in the neck. Many felt his mocking behavior and bad jokes were over the top.

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A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. —William Shakespeare The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month. —Fyodor Dostoevsky

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Kets de Vries, M.F.R. (2019). The Wise Fool. In: Down the Rabbit Hole of Leadership. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92462-5_15

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1. THE FOOLISH WISDOM OF JOE

2. revealed truths of the mid-victorian literature of success, 3. dickens's criticism of the aspiration for social mobility, works cited, joe as the wise fool in great expectations : dickens's criticism of the mid-victorian literature of success and upward social mobility.

MASAYO HASEGAWA is a lecturer at Kochi University, Japan. Her publications include “Cannibalistic Martyrdom in A Tale of Two Cities : The Ambiguous Duality of Sydney Carton's Death” ( Dickens and the Anatomy of Evil: Sesquicentennial Essays , edited by Mitsuharu Matsuoka, Athena Press 2020) and “Walter Gay's Voyage Away from Home in Dombey and Son : Dickens's Usage of the Imperial Periphery for His Young Hero's Happy Ending” ( The Japan Branch Bulletin of the Dickens Fellowship , no. 38, 2015). Parts of her discussion in the first section of this essay, “The Foolish Wisdom of Joe,” have been already published in her previous essay in Japanese, “The Wise Fool, Joe: Pip Begging Joe's Forgiveness” ( The Japan Branch Bulletin of the Dickens Fellowship , no. 25, 2002, pp. 68-78).

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Masayo Hasegawa; Joe as the Wise Fool in Great Expectations : Dickens's Criticism of the Mid-Victorian Literature of Success and Upward Social Mobility. Dickens Studies Annual 1 September 2021; 52 (2): 299–319. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/dickstudannu.52.2.0299

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Criticism of Great Expectations often portrays Joe, a gentle blacksmith, as important to the novel's definition of a true gentleman. While this is understandable, Joe plays a more important role in the novel's discussion of the contemporary literature of success to propagate the ideal of the self-made man. This role is as a wise fool and truth-teller, through whom Dickens highlights a contradiction in the literature's messages about the social mobility of working-class people. This contradiction arises as a result of the self-interested desire of the middle classes to bolster their advantageous position in the hierarchical Victorian society, and Dickens censures this self-interestedness. However, Dickens is also aligned with contemporary success stories in their denial of social climbing of the working classes because he believed that working-class social ambitions had the potential to disturb Victorian class society and his own gentlemanly identity. While he advocates a static stratified society, at the same time he wishes to ameliorate the status quo of Victorian class society and address the way it disadvantages the working classes. The means for social betterment proposed in Great Expectations involve the moral betterment of gentlemanly middle-class people.

Everything in art, good or bad, should have, and usually has, a central thought to which its parts bear some harmonious relation. In Great Expectations the thought is one often enforced by Mr Dickens: that far greater than great expectations from without is the worth of an honest man's own wholesome labour. Joe Gargery lies at the core of the tale, an illiterate blacksmith living by his own large arm and loving with his own large heart, strong as a man, simple as a child, but like a good woman gentle and true, and unconsciously self-denying. (Forster, “Literary” 453)

Although critics differ on whether Joe personifies the novel's ideal gentleman, they agree that this character is deeply involved in Dickens's definition of gentlemanliness. While this is reasonable, this essay will argue that Dickens purposefully gave Joe a more central and significant role in the novel in order to discuss the ideal of the self-made man, an ideal that was intertwined with the ideal of the gentleman and which the mid-Victorian literature of success attempted to propagate. This essay will then examine the role assigned to Joe, and in so doing will reveal Dickens's perceptions of contemporary success stories and social mobility.

Mannerisms are a strategy which Dickens often used to express the characteristics and features of his characters, and Joe's favorite phrase “most awful dull” is a good example of this. Joe, who is always described as a “fool” and “foolish,” repeatedly describes himself as “most awful dull.” The phrase is most effectively used when young Pip attempts to make Joe wiser by educating him. In this scene, Pip gives up because Joe “plume[s] himself on being ‘most awful dull’” (110; ch. 15). This description means that he “boasts of being extremely ignorant.” However, its literal meaning is that he “decks himself with feathers as being an awesome fool,” and seems to refer to the imposing feather on a cap of the fool. As William Willeford's study on clowns and jesters illustrates, the feather is part of the clothing of fools, who have a strong connection with birds, as with a coxcomb (3-8). Joe's verbal mannerism “most awful dull” implies that he is a fool of this category.

This identity of Joe is foregrounded when he is in his Sunday clothes. In this attire, Joe appears to be wearing a fool's cap with a feather, as his shirt-collar is pulled up high so that it “[makes] the hair on the crown of his head stand up like a tuft of feathers” (99; ch. 13). Moreover, he resembles “a scarecrow in good circumstances,” because “[n]othing that he wore then, fitted him or seemed to belong to him” (23; ch. 4). Natalie McKnight observes that Dickens uses garments that are “at once tattered and full of absurd adornments” or “oversize and oddly shaped” as his own variation on the fool's traditional motley garments (41-43). Joe's holiday clothes, which are so ill-fitting that they seem haphazard and odd, can be categorized as this type. He also acts in a foolish or clownish manner while wearing these motley garments. For example, Joe holds his hat as if it is “a bird's-nest with eggs in it” (219; ch. 27) during his visit to Pip in London. Using the hat like a clown in a mime, he then makes “extraordinary play” and shows “the greatest skill” by “now, rushing at [the hat] and catching it neatly as it drop[s]; now, merely stopping it midway, beating it up, and humouring it in various parts of the room and against a good deal of the pattern of the paper on the wall” (222; ch. 27).

Joe is thus depicted as a jester-like fool in Great Expectations . He is therefore characterized by other characters as a “fool” and “foolish,” and described by the author as “a good-natured foolish man” who makes the novel's opening “exceedingly droll” ( Letters 9: 325), indicating Joe's role in the novel. His name and nickname, Joseph Gargery and Joe, fulfill the same function, because they evoke a famous clown known as Joseph Grimaldi, or Joe/Joey. Dickens was very familiar with Grimaldi, as he was greatly involved in the publication of his biography, Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi (1838). Edwin M. Eigner states that Dickensian pantomimic clowns are similar to the English pantomime clowns popularized by Grimaldi, as they both serve as “the principal source of benevolent power [for the heroine Columbine]” (123). He goes on to say that “Joe has too much dignity to get involved with the Satis House world, and cannot therefore be expected to rescue Estella” (127), and concludes that Great Expectations features no clown. Even if it is true that Joe is not a comical, magical rescuing Grimaldi-like clown, he is a character “with all the implications of seriousness, of criticism of the shallowness and emptiness of sophistication and worldly wisdom, that the figure of the clown at its fullest implies” (Wilson 271).

Yet it would be better to class Joe as a fool rather than a clown, and he is the type of Dickensian fool who, as Robert M. McCarron argues, “inhabits almost every novel, presenting his paradoxical blend of wisdom and folly” (40). More precisely, Joe is a wise fool who tells ironic truths, like the Fool in Shakespeare's King Lear . Dickens appreciated this type of bitter fool, judging from The Examiner 's review of the 1838 production of King Lear with William Charles Macready in the title role. According to Paul Schlicke, this review was written by Forster and Dickens certainly sympathized with its content (88). It refers to Lear's Fool as “one of the most wonderful creations of Shakespeare's genius,” and greatly praises “his quick and pregnant sarcasm” and “his loving devotion” (“Theatrical” 69). Dickens later introduced a similar sarcastic and devoted fool, his own version of Lear's Fool, in Great Expectations .

I meantersay, you two gentlemen—which I hope as you get your elths in this close spot? For the present may be a wery good inn, according to London opinions, … and I believe its character do stand i; but I wouldn't keep a pig in it myself—not in the case that I wished him to fatten wholesome and to eat with a meller flavour on him. (220-21; ch. 27)

Pip unwillingly notices this fact about his living condition, and wants to conceal it from Joe. The reality of living in London has failed to match Pip's dreams, for he finds it “rather ugly, crooked, narrow and dirty” (163; ch. 20). Pip becomes even more disappointed when Barnard's Inn, supposedly appointed for him to live a genteel life, is “the dingiest collection of shabby buildings ever squeezed together in a rank corner” and looks like “a mere dust-hole” covered with “soot and smoke” and strewn with “dry rot and wet rot and all the silent rots” (173; ch. 21). On his first day in London, Pip thus feels, “So imperfect was this realisation of the first of my great expectations” (173; ch. 21). Pip recognizes that his “gentleman's dwelling” is dirtier and less hygienic than the forge where he was ashamed of being “dusty with the dust of small-coal” (107; ch. 14), and therefore “cause[s] the sitting-room and breakfast-table to assume their most splendid appearance” (218; ch. 27) on the morning of Joe's visit. This signifies Pip's snobbish desire to hide the inferiority of his dwelling and to keep up his superior appearance as a gentleman. Joe's “how AIR you” is ironic, as it reveals the truth which Pip is trying to cover up, and consequently highlights his own snobbery of putting on a gentleman's “AIR.” Similarly, other comments which Joe makes to Pip at this point, such as “[you have] that swelled, and that gentlefolked” (219; ch. 27), also emerge as ironical. Although they are intended as a pure compliment by Joe, who is glad that Pip became gentlemanly, they sound like a comment on Pip's social pretentions when his role of a fool is taken into consideration.

During this meeting with Pip, Joe makes another perplexing yet significant utterance. When asked whether he has seen anything of London yet, he replies that he went to see a shoe-blacking factory. He further says that the building drawn on a bill was “architectooralooral” compared to the real one, trying to prolong this word into “a perfect Chorus” (222; ch. 27). When Joe says “tooralooral” as if singing a chorus, it evokes the following comic song, which has been impressed upon Pip as having an “amount of Too rul somewhat in excess of the poetry” (109; ch. 15): When I went to Lunnon town sirs, Too rul loo rul Too rul loo rul Wasn't I done very brown sirs, Too rul loo rul Too rul loo rul (109; ch. 15) If Joe's word “architectooralooral” does remind Pip of this comic song, it surely forces him to recall his past as a naïve, ignorant blacksmith's apprentice who learned this ridiculous song by heart with “the utmost gravity” and a “desire to be wiser” (109; ch. 15). The word thus sounds satirical for Pip, who attempts to deny his humiliating past and to portray himself as a sophisticated gentleman against the unrefined blacksmith Joe.

Disclosing truths which gentleman Pip wishes to disguise or deny—the shabbiness of his dwelling, his origins, and above all his snobbery underlying this wish, Joe's words assume a tint of criticism and sarcasm. It should be noted here that Joe is probably unconscious of the fact that he is debunking Pip and acting as a wise fool. In contrast, like Dickens as Joe's creator, Pip is at least partially aware of the masked identity of this foolish blacksmith with a good heart. When genteel Pip patronizes Joe and asks him why he persists in calling Pip “Sir,” he thus feels “something faintly like reproach” (222; ch. 27) in Joe's eyes. Moreover, the feeling is rephrased in words which are more expressive of Pip's awareness: “Utterly preposterous as his cravat was, and as his collars were, I was conscious of a sort of dignity in the look” (222; ch. 27).

Although Joe's role as a wise fool who tells unpleasant truths is most fully manifested in his meeting with genteel Pip in London, the most important truth which he gives does not relate to Pip's moral degradation and snobbery. Instead, it is in regard to the contemporary literature of success which intended to inculcate the ideal of the self-made man.

The ideas of the gentleman and the self-made man are combined in Great Expectations , and they converge upon Pip's aspiration to elevate himself to gentility after being despised by Estella as “a common labouring-boy” (65; ch. 8). Her contempt causes him to become class-conscious; he feels humiliated over his working-class status and wishes to become a gentleman. Pip explains this to Joe, saying “[Estella] had said I was common,” “I knew I was common” and “I wished I was not common” (70; ch. 9). By “I wished I was not common,” Pip means that he wishes to be a “gentleman,” as later clarified in his confession to Biddy, “I want to be a gentleman” (129; ch. 17).

In reaction to Pip's newborn social ambition, Joe remarks: “you must be a common scholar afore you can be a oncommon one, I should hope! The king upon his throne, with his crown upon his ed, can't sit and write his acts of Parliament in print, without having begun, when he were a unpromoted Prince, with the alphabet … and begun at A too, and worked his way to Z” (71; ch. 9). By substituting the word “oncommon” for Pip's “not common” and using the metaphor of ascent to the throne, Joe alludes to the opportunity to climb the social ladder. Joe goes on to say, “If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, you'll never get to do it through going crooked” (72; ch. 9) in order to highlight the importance of morality in social advancement. Joe's advice is understandable as a guarantee that a person who combines hard work with moral virtues will achieve a status above that of common people, namely the status of gentleman. Contradictorily, Joe also gives a speech which implicitly opposes the pursuit of upward mobility, closing his advice to Pip with the statement “live well and die happy” (72; ch. 9): “Whether common ones as to callings and earnings … mightn't be the better of continuing fur to keep company with common ones, instead of going out to play with oncommon ones” (71; ch. 9). For Joe, characterized by “an idealized absence of social ambition” (Nayder 137), happiness in life comes from satisfaction with one's inherited social circle. Joe's advice therefore both encourages and discourages social mobility at the same time.

Joe's contradictory advice is strongly reminiscent of the mid-Victorian literature of success. Success stories proliferated in England in the late 1850s and 1860s, with self-help as the predominant theme and widening the scope of what it meant to be self-made (J. F. C. Harrison 203-04). They featured stories of men who rose to social and financial success from humble beginnings due to their own hard work and integrity. While their targeted readership varied in age, sex, and class, much of the success literature focused on appealing to working-class men. For example, Samuel Smiles's book Self-Help ( 1859 ) originated with The Education of the Working Classes (1845), a work based on a talk that he had given at a mutual improvement society in Leeds. With working-class men as its main target, moreover, the literature often presented the status of gentleman as the embodiment and proof of one's socio-economic rise. This is exemplified in Dinah Maria Mulock's success story John Halifax, Gentleman ( 1856 ), a story about a poor orphan who transforms himself from a tanner's lad to a prosperous mill-owner. This reflects the reality of the self-made man idea in mid-Victorian England, as observed by Asa Briggs: “In the battle between the self-made man and the gentleman, the self-made man won in England only if he became a gentleman himself, or tried to turn his son into one” (142).

At the same time, nevertheless, much of the literature denounces aspirations for upward mobility as well as for financial success. This is because the literature was a form of middle-class propaganda and, as Trygve R. Tholfsen points out, did not promote “any blurring of class lines,” but assumed “a stratified and static society which encouraged movement within separate social classes” (65). This explains why the hero of John Halifax, Gentleman believes that he is of noble heritage, due to his conviction that his father was “[a] scholar and a gentleman” (5). Even though this is not proven in the novel, his belief is intended to suggest that his mobility does not subvert the established social order.

Riches and rank have no necessary connexion with genuine gentlemanly qualities. The poor man may be a true gentleman,—in spirit and in daily life. He may be honest, truthful, upright, polite, temperate, courageous, self-respecting, and self-helping,—that is, be a true gentleman. The poor man with a rich spirit is in all ways superior to the rich man with a poor spirit. (327-28)

However, Similes himself offsets his own warning against social mobility. Self-Help is a collection of biographies of people meant to inspire, and they are described as “[c]ommoners raised from humble to elevated positions by the power of application and industry” (174) and as “distinguished men who have honourably worked their way to the highest position, and won the richest rewards of their profession, by the diligent exercise of qualities in many respects of an ordinary character, but made potent by the force of application and industry” (189). These descriptions seem to suggest that an increase in social rank is possible as a tantalizing reward for hard work and perseverance, and consequently induce readers to see the book as a gospel for material success. Moreover, Smiles stresses that such success is possible for everyone by saying, “Employ the same means, and the same results will follow” (245). For the same purpose, the following words are quoted: “perseverance is the great agent of success; and if we but go on zealously, I believe in my conscience that in a short period we shall arrive at a position of equal comfort, of equal happiness, and of equal independence, with that of any other people” (19).

Despite their opposition to the crossing of class boundaries, Smiles and other authors in the mid-Victorian literature of success sweetened the idea of self-help with the prospect of upward mobility as well as financial advancement, and seemingly proposed social egalitarianism. This contradictory behavior arises because these middle-class authors wished to incentivize the hard work and moral virtues which they presented as requirements for self-improvement. In other words, the literature of success was a middle-class lure to motivate the lower classes, specifically the working class, to become virtuous and industrious. Stacy Floyd observes that Joe, accepting his working-class position instead of questioning it, offers Dickens's middle-class audience “a safe, resigned image of working-class identity” (108). However, Joe embodies the type of working-class people which the middle class wished for, rather than the safe identity of the working class. Joe possesses “a strong sense of the virtue of industry” (108; ch. 14), along with other moral merits such as being “amiable honest hearted” (108; ch. 14) and “good faithful tender” (141; ch. 18). Besides, he is “perfectly innocent” of “a rise in station” (148; ch. 19). He exemplifies the ideal working-class man which the middle-class writers of success stories desired to mold.

“… I don't know why it should be a crack thing to be a brewer; but it is indisputable that while you cannot possibly be genteel and bake, you may be as genteel as never was and brew. You see it every day.” “Yet a gentleman may not keep a public-house; may he?” said I. “Not on any account,” returned Herbert; “but a public-house may keep a gentleman ….” (180; ch. 22)

The unfair advantages of the middle classes are reproduced in the criminal world by Compeyson and Magwitch, where “[a]ll sorts of traps as Compeyson could set with his head, and keep his own legs out of and get the profits from and let another man in for, was Compeyson's business” (348; ch. 42), while Magwitch was “a poor tool … in his hands” (348; ch. 42) and treated as “his black slave” (350; ch. 42). Compeyson forced Magwitch to toil as his “hand” and exploited him, which reflects the relationship between the genteel middle classes and the common working classes in the wider industrialized and stratified Victorian society. Moreover, Magwitch says that he was given a more severe punishment at trial because Compeyson was “set up fur a gentleman,” being “a smooth one to talk” and “a dab at the ways of gentlefolks” (347; ch. 42), while Magwitch was “a common sort of wretch” (350; ch. 42). This demonstrates that Victorian society privileged the middle class and endorsed the inequalities that favored them.

As a vengeful indictment of this social structure, Magwitch creates a gentleman out of Pip. When he discloses that he is Pip's benefactor, Magwitch says, “I've made a gentleman on you” (319; ch. 39) and explains its measure as follows: “I lived rough, that you should live smooth; I worked hard, that you should be above work” (319; ch. 39). Pip's smooth and leisured life as a gentleman is only possible because of the rough and hard life which Magwitch lived in Australia while being disdained by colonists on “blood horses” (321; ch. 39) and ridiculed as an “ignorant common fellow” (321; ch. 39). In making and keeping gentleman Pip via his hard work, Magwitch highlights and exposes the fact that the genteel and comfortable station of the middle classes is dependent on the hard toil of common working people. Besides, when the relationship is viewed with a focus on Pip, who rises to gentility only by dint of Magwitch's industry, it comes out as “a monstrous parody, as well as a parable about the dangers of Victorian middle-class affluence not properly grounded in an ethic that holds work as a religious value” (Campbell 158).

[the privileged class] forces the other to work for it and takes from this inferior class everything that it can take from it, and uses the wealth so taken to keep its own members in a superior position, to make them beings of a higher order than the others: longer lived, more beautiful, more honoured, more refined than those of the other class. (152-53)

Dickens identifies a similar middle-class self-interestedness in the contemporary literature of success, which consists of the gospel of work along with the doctrine of success and the preaching of morality. However, he regards this not as “a convenient belief” of the middle classes, but as a deliberate lie to increase their own profits and prosperity. Dickens believed that the middle classes were attempting to reinforce their unfairly-favorable position using success stories to persuade the workers on whom they depended to work harder and more virtuously with sweet promises that they would rise in the world as a result. If so, it can be ironically said that the literature of success purported to stabilize the dependency of the middle class on the working class, although Smiles articulated in the preface to the 1866 edition of Self-Help that the book aimed to make the lower classes independent so that they could “rely upon their own efforts in life, rather than depend upon the help or patronage of others” (3).

Jerome Meckier argues that Great Expectations is a parody of Smilesian success stories intended to criticize the fact that they promulgate extravagant and deleterious expectations of advancement by reiterating unrealistic promises that anyone can achieve a magical, Cinderella-like rise in social status. While this is the case, the prime target of Dickens's criticism was specifically their self-interestedness. Dickens felt it was this self-interest which drove the middle classes to deceitfully tempt the working class to become virtuous and industrious for their own benefit.

Dickens created the wise fool Joe as a weapon of criticism, who reveals contradictions in the contemporary literature of success about social mobility as a result of the middle class's selfish desires while personifying the type of working person whom they self-servingly wished for. Interestingly, this wise fool designates a gentleman as “oncommon,” instead of “not common” like Pip. This wording mirrors the rhetoric of the mid-Victorian literature of success to inflame aspirations for upward mobility, which used phrases such as “get on from the common station.” It also demonstrates what the middle class aimed to enhance through this literature—their advantageous position above the common people, which was maintained by their exploitative dependency on commoners.

Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together, as I may say, and one man's a blacksmith, and one's a whitesmith, and one's a goldsmith, and one's a coppersmith. Diwisions among such must come, and must be met as they come. If there's been any fault at all to-day, it's mine. You and me is not two figures to be together in London; nor yet anywheres else but what is private, and beknown, and understood among friends. It ain't that I am proud, but that I want to be right, as you shall never see me no more in these clothes. I'm wrong in these clothes. I'm wrong out of the forge, the kitchen, or off th'meshes. You won't find half so much fault in me if you think of me in my forge dress, with my hammer in my hand, or even my pipe. You won't find half so much fault in me if, supposing as you should ever wish to see me, you come and put your head in at the forge winder and see Joe the blacksmith, there, at the old anvil, in the old burnt apron, sticking to the old work. I'm awful dull, but I hope I've beat out something nigh the rights of this at last. (224; ch. 27)

Through Joe, Dickens issued a negative view of working-class social ambition. The negation results partly from his fear that such aspirations would generate dissonance within the working classes. Dickens believed that this would be inevitable, as he felt that social ambition meant viewing higher stations as better and lower positions as worse. The perspectives are similar to the impressions which Pip as a little child has of the word “Above” on his family tombstone: “I read ‘wife of the Above’ as a complimentary reference to my father's exaltation to a better world; and if any one of my deceased relations had been referred to as ‘Below,’ I have no doubt I should have formed the worst opinions of that member of the family” (43; ch. 7). As this impression foreshadows, after wishing to “get on in life” (73; ch. 10) and coming to see the world of Miss Havisham and Estelle as “far above the level of [his] common doings” (72; ch. 9), Pip naturally comes to admire it as better. Simultaneously, he comes to despise all belonging to the life of “a common labouring-boy” including the smithy. This is despite the fact that he once believed “the forge” to be “the glowing road to manhood and independence” (107; ch. 14), and “the plain honest working life to which [he] was born” as “[having] nothing in it to be ashamed of, but [offering] [him] sufficient means of self-respect and happiness” (132; ch. 17). Pip's cravings for social advancement, inspired by the Satis House world, cause him to perceive everything in the sphere of the working class as “in a low-lived bad way” (65; ch. 8) and “coarse and common” (107; ch. 14). Pip therefore becomes unable to comprehend the self-respect and pride of common working people, which Biddy explains to Pip by saying, “there are many kinds of pride” and “[Joe] may be too proud to let any one take him out of a place that he is competent to fill, and fills well and with respect” (149; ch. 19). Pip's changing views of his inherited working-class status allow Dickens to voice his concern that aspirations for upward mobility would incite working-class people to belittle and feel contempt for their fellows and for themselves, which would lead to dissonance within their own class.

These worries are another reason why Dickens censured mid-Victorian success stories, as they not only stimulated a hunger for worldly success among the working classes but also sometimes deliberately attempted to erode their self-respect and prompt them to undervalue and slight the status of common workers. One example of this is William Anderson's Self-Made Men ( 1861 ), which states that: “It is no disgrace to be born in the deepest obscurity; but to remain there, after so many brilliant examples, is, indeed, degradation. After so many rising from the lowest rounds of the ladder to the highest, every authoritative judgment in the world will condemn you, if you remain in your present position” (303).

Social disharmony could arise not only within the working class itself, but also between the working classes and the middle classes, and Dickens seemed to have regarded the latter scenario as more dangerous. While Dickens comprehended that inter-class dissonance could emanate from the discontent fostered when aspirations were not satisfied, the mid-Victorian literature of success might be seen to discount this possibility. It rashly stipulated that socio-economic success was available to everyone and required only perseverance, as opposed to any special skills, talent, or luck. This quasi-democratic and egalitarian claim was criticized by contemporaries. George Potter, founder of the trade unionist journal The Bee-Hive , dismissed these claims as chimerical. He contended that: “[labourers] are perpetually told to follow George Stephenson, and Benjamin Franklin, and a few other exceptional , mighty geniuses of mind, and giants in body set forth in ‘Self help’ as guides and examples for universal attainment. Verily working men may be fools to dream of a better future, or seek its realisation” (13). Moreover, as Harold Perkin demonstrates, mid-Victorian England saw a decline in opportunities for upward social mobility, and this is reflected in Self-Help , whose self-made heroes were mostly drawn from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (425). This signifies that the “universal success” presented by the literature of success was in reality very much the exception at the time Great Expectations was published.

In a similar way to Potter, Dickens thus considered contemporary success stories to be unrealistic and impractical, which is evinced in Pip's journey to become a gentleman. After listening to Joe's advice, which is reminiscent of the contradictory messages about social mobility found in the literature of success, Pip—who wishes to be “not common”—comes to believe as follows: “the best step I could take towards making myself uncommon was to get out of Biddy everything she knew” (73; ch. 10). The change in Pip's expression, from describing his own wish to be “not common” to “uncommon,” resonates with Joe's use of the word “oncommon.” This indicates that Pip's ambitions to get on in the world are “encouraged” (71; ch. 9) by Joe's words. In other words, Joe's advice to reject social climbing fell on deaf ears, as it might when addressed to ambitious common people reading the literature of success. As a result, Pip makes an effort to educate himself by studying at night after working at the forge, and invests much of his money for this purpose. He follows the path which the literature of success asserts will lead people to success, but feels that “it would take time, to become uncommon under these circumstances” (74; ch. 10), implying that his efforts will not pay off. Indeed, although Pip finally becomes a gentleman, what makes him so is not his industry or perseverance, but unexpected luck, as Pip himself claims, “I have done nothing to raise myself in life” and “Fortune alone has raised me” (248; ch. 30). Pip's trajectory to the status of gentleman is thus intended as a satirical parody of impractical and unrealistic mid-Victorian success stories.

These stories can be said to arouse social aspirations that were unattainable for most common working people. Dickens thought that such unrealized aspirations could only result in dangerous social conflict. Pip cherishes such aspirational feelings while on his seemingly endless road to social success; he is “restlessly aspiring discontented” (108; ch. 14) in contrast to Joe, who is “plain contented” (108; ch. 14) because of his entire lack of social ambition. Pip would have become threatening to the middle class if he were not elevated as he aspired, a scenario which plays out with Orlick in the place of Pip. Orlick has often been construed as Pip's double or dark alter ego since Julian Moynahan's influential essay. Moynahan reads Orlick as Pip's double who acts out his aggressive feelings and punishes other characters. While this is valid as a symbolical reading of the novel, when put into the socio-historical context, Orlick emerges as a frustrated aspirant in Victorian society where success stories run rampant—what Pip would have become if he had not encountered unexpected fortune. This mirror image of Pip as a discontented social climber violently attacks first Pip's sister Mrs. Joe, and later the socially-risen Pip, and rationalizes this as follows: “You was always in Old Orlick's way since ever you was a child” (425; ch. 53) and “You was favoured, and [I] was bullied and beat” (426; ch. 53). Being the alter ego of aspirant laborer Pip, Orlick implies that when the social aspirations of the working classes as inflamed by the discourse of mid-Victorian success stories are frustrated, they engender dissatisfaction. This then turns into animosity against those who are favored and socially elevated, such as the middle class. Dickens believed that this inter-class discord would assume an aggressive and violent character, which would be subversive and dangerous to Victorian society as a whole.

Dickens proscribes the working class's social aspirations because of his understanding that it would lead to both intra- and inter-class disharmony. However, he refutes these aspirations so assertively and simply by describing them as “wrong” that readers may guess that there is another reason. Dickens did indeed have personal reasons for opposing these aspirations related to his miserable childhood. Dickens is often called a typical self-made man who climbed up the social ladder by dint of hard work from a low status and against all odds. Dickens must have reckoned himself so, even if his contemporaries might not, because the story of his early struggles was unknown to the public until the publication of Forster's biography after his death. On the other hand, it would have been impossible for Dickens to boast of this identity, like Josiah Bounderby in Hard Times (1854), when the contemporary discourse of self-made men accentuated their humble or obscure beginnings. For a lifetime Dickens had secretly suffered due to his childhood experiences, which he personally found humiliating and shameful—especially his father's imprisonment in Marshalsea Debtors' Prison and his own employment at Warren's Blacking Factory. He was particularly embarrassed by the experience of being pushed into the working-class life at a factory, where he was forced to engage in manual labor as “a shabby child” with “common men and boys” (Forster, Life 23). This caused him life-long trauma, so that identifying with the figure of the self-made man disturbed him even at the time he published Great Expectations . In this fictional autobiography, Dickens therefore disclaims those who transgress across class boundaries, which suggests that he validates only those self-made men who achieve social advancement within their inherited class. This is his redefinition of the self-made man, and tantamount for him to claiming as his birthright the status of respectable middle-class gentleman, which he obtained by his own hard work. In other words, his rejection of working-class upward mobility in Great Expectations is indicative of his anxieties over his own class status arising from his difficult childhood.

In David Copperfield (1849–50), the same worries appear in the characterization of its hero. Dickens attempts to legitimize his own genteel middle-class identity by bestowing genteel ancestry on David as his double, and describes David's long-sought status as a respectable member of the middle classes as not acquired but reclaimed. However, Great Expectations is, as Peter Ackroyd remarks, “a much more frankly autobiographical work than David Copperfield ,” for it is more of a retrospective on the secret of Dickens's miserable and humiliating past (949-50). The clearest sign of this is the fact that Dickens chose an ordinary working-class boy without any genteel ancestry to be the protagonist of his fictional autobiography. Dickens provides a deeper and more honest introspection of his past self in Great Expectations as trapped in a working-class life, resulting in a significant difference between this novel and David Copperfield , and highlights the author's different attitudes toward social climbers. In David Copperfield , Dickens seems to have no sympathetic feelings towards social climbers with low-class origins. For example, as Rebecca Richardson points out, Uriah Heep appears as one of the “bad examples of self-help” whom Dickens uses to punish lower-class social ambition (270). In contrast, Estella's contempt acts as the trigger for Pip's social ambition in Great Expectations , and is compared to an infectious disease: “Her contempt was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it” (60; ch. 8). Pip's ambitions are also interwoven with his love for Estella, which is depicted as “irresistible” (232; ch. 29). These descriptions indicate Dickens believed that social ambitions were a natural and inevitable ambition for common working people.

This sympathy made Dickens characterize Joe, a working-class man totally lacking in desire to rise in society, as an “archetypal pre-industrial revolution craftsman” (Gilmour, Idea 127). This characterization reveals his view that it was easy to lack social ambition in pre-industrial society, where there were fewer opportunities to climb the social ladder. In other words, it was difficult in mid-Victorian society, which is part of the period described by Frederic Harrison as “the age of great expectation and unwearied striving after better things” (415), even if the opportunities were curtailed compared to the preceding period.

While Dickens sympathized with working-class people's aspirations for upward mobility, he disapproved because he saw them as threatening both Victorian society and his gentlemanly identity. Although this disapproval reveals Dickens's espousal of the existing stratified social structure, it does not imply that he accepted the status quo of Victorian society. Indeed, Dickens thought that the people society considered respectable and genteel exploited the common laborers whom they depended on, and that what Morris would later call “class-robbery” prevailed. As a means to ameliorate this unequal society, Dickens offers a moralistic solution different from Morris's socialistic response: to moralize people of genteel status. Gilmour states that Great Expectations exhibits “the essential development of Dickens' social thinking [lying] through a rejection of the self-made man, towards an affirmation of a gentlemanly ideal which has been purged of its associations with class and social ambition” (“Dickens” 99). This is not true, although Dickens's definition of gentlemen in the novel was aligned with the contemporary trend which James Fitzjames Stephen in 1862 described as “a constantly increasing disposition to insist more upon the moral and less upon the social element of the word” (330). The truth is, as some critics demonstrate, that the ideal gentleman presented in Great Expectations retains an “elitist dimension” (Hennessee 309) or has gentlemanliness in “ both heart and manner” (Brown 139). This is connoted by Dickens's definition of a true gentleman, which is given via Matthew Pocket's principle that “no man who was not a true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true gentleman in manner” (181; ch. 22). For Dickens, a true gentleman must have good morals, and at the same time is not disentangled from marks of social distinction such as manners, learning, and rank. He therefore avoided bestowing the title of gentleman on Joe, who is uppermost in moral virtue but common and coarse in social criteria: he is nothing but a “gentle Christian man” (463; ch. 57). Dickens was not attempting to give an egalitarian lesson explaining “how anyone can become a gentleman,” but rather to convey a class-bounded message, “how people of the social rank of gentleman can make themselves true gentlemen.”

Dickens's model of the ideal gentleman resonates with John Henry Newman's gentleman in The Idea of a University , which was based on his Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education (1852) and published under that title in 1873. Newman defines the gentleman as “one who never inflicts pain” (208) because he has moral sensibilities and empathy. He further observes that “[t]he true gentleman … carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast” and “his great concern [is] to make every one at their ease and at home” (209). Dickens thought that such gentlemen could be the solution to the problems facing Victorian society. He believed that the moral and spiritual betterment of the middle-class people who were above and dependent on common people—as demonstrated by Pip when he empathizes with his common and coarse benefactor Magwitch—would lead to the betterment of society.

As this essay discussed, while Joe is depicted as “a good-natured foolish man,” his role within Great Expectations is not only as a truly gentle man but also as a wise fool and a truth-teller. With this fool, Dickens censured the mid-Victorian literature of success by highlighting that it deceitfully fueled working-class aspirations for upward social mobility exclusively to reinforce the advantageous position of the middle classes in Victorian society's unequal hierarchy. Dickens genuinely hoped to improve the status quo, which disadvantaged ordinary working people. However, he did not mean to do so by fostering social mobility, as Dickens believed that working-class social ambition had the potential to disturb the stratified Victorian society and his own gentlemanly identity. Instead, he proposed the moral improvement of the middle classes who were above yet dependent on common working people. More importantly, if the moralization of the gentlemanly middle class is the novel's answer to social betterment, Joe's criticism of gentleman Pip's moral degradation has social significance. In the scene where his role as a wise fool is most foregrounded, Dickens makes Joe criticize Pip's immorality. This is because Dickens believed that Victorian society would be improved when the morality of middle-class people like Pip is improved.

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Benjamin Disraeli: 'The fool wonders, the wise man asks.'

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

In the words of Benjamin Disraeli, "The fool wonders, the wise man asks." This profound quote encapsulates the stark contrast between two distinct approaches to life. At first glance, it seems to suggest that those who merely wonder about things are fools, while those who seek understanding through questioning are wise. However, upon closer inspection, this quote holds a deeper meaning that delves into the essence of wisdom and the pursuit of knowledge.To summarize the quote, Disraeli suggests that those who passively wonder about life's mysteries without actively seeking answers are regarded as fools. On the other hand, the wise are individuals who possess the intellectual curiosity and courage to inquire, to ask questions, and to delve further into the depths of knowledge. This straightforward interpretation emphasizes the importance of active engagement, using one's intellect to seek answers instead of simply speculating.But what if I were to introduce a concept that challenges this conventional understanding and adds an unexpected twist to the article? Let us consider the philosophy of wonder. Wonder, as explored by various philosophers throughout history, is associated with a state of awe, marvel, and contemplation. It stimulates our innate curiosity, raising questions about our existence, the universe, and our place within it. Wonder encourages us to explore the marvels of life and to embrace the unknown.The fool, in this context, may be seen as an individual who remains in a constant state of wonder, constantly amazed by life's intricacies but without the agency to ask questions and seek answers. They may be content with the mystery, blissfully unaware of what lies beyond their awe. This perspective presents an intriguing contrast to Disraeli's quote and prompts us to consider the value of wonder itself.In contrast, the wise person, according to Disraeli, is driven by an innate desire for knowledge, pushing boundaries and challenging the status quo. They do not merely marvel at the wonders around them; instead, they actively seek to understand and unravel the underlying truths. The act of questioning becomes their compass, leading them on a journey of intellectual growth.While Disraeli's quote implies that the wise man asks questions, the introduction of wonder as a parallel concept reminds us that there can be profound beauty in simply wondering. Wonder ignites our imagination, allowing us to appreciate the mysteries of life without the need for immediate answers. It encourages a sense of humility, acknowledging that some things may forever remain beyond our comprehension.In light of these contrasting perspectives, it becomes clear that both wonder and questioning play crucial roles in our intellectual and spiritual development. The interplay between the two creates a harmonious balance, allowing us to marvel at the unknown while actively seeking understanding.Ultimately, Disraeli's quote serves as a reminder to embrace both wonder and inquiry on our journey to wisdom. It encourages us to remain curious, to engage with the world around us, and to never settle for surface-level understanding. By cultivating both the capacity to wonder and the courage to ask questions, we unlock new avenues of knowledge and experience the richness that life has to offer.In conclusion, Disraeli's quote, "The fool wonders, the wise man asks," carries profound meaning that extends beyond its initial interpretation. It highlights the importance of actively seeking answers rather than passively wondering, urging us to engage in the pursuit of knowledge. However, by introducing the concept of wonder, we uncover a broader perspective that acknowledges the beauty of contemplation and appreciates the mysteries that may forever elude our understanding. The integration of wonder and questioning enables us to cultivate a deeper sense of wisdom, nurturing both our inquisitive nature and our ability to be awestruck by life's marvels.

Benjamin Disraeli: 'The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations.'

Benjamin disraeli: 'it is much easier to be critical than to be correct.'.

The Praise of Folly

Desiderius erasmus, everything you need for every book you read..

Essay on “The fool speaks, and the wise listen”

The old saying that “the idiot talks, and the wise listen” is a timeless reminder of the significance of listening as well as the risks associated with speaking too quickly or too much. This proverb emphasises the importance of being a good listener as well as recognising the worth of other people’s perspectives and life experiences. It serves as a reminder that often the most significant teachings come from individuals who are not normally thought of as experts, and that there is frequently much to be learned from those who are located in our immediate environment, regardless of their position in life.

Listening gives us the opportunity to learn new points of view and deepen our comprehension of the world around us, which is one of the primary reasons for the significance of this activity. When we listen to other people, we are presented with a variety of viewpoints, experiences, and insights, all of which have the potential to challenge our own perspectives and widen our horizons. This may be especially helpful when we are dealing with difficult or contentious problems, as it can enable us to view the subject from a variety of perspectives and gain an understanding of the reasons and rationale that lie behind the beliefs of others.

Listening is one of the most crucial tools for creating connections as well as collaboration among individuals. When we indicate to people that we respect them and are interested in what they have to say by listening to what they have to say, this may assist to create trust and make communication easier. This is of utmost significance in professional contexts, where clear and concise communication is essential to the successful accomplishment of objectives and the functioning of a cohesive team. By engaging in attentive listening, we may strengthen our connections with our coworkers, clients, and partners, as well as improve the efficiency with which we collaborate.

Listening is extremely essential for a number of reasons, one of which is that it enables us to see and handle possible difficulties before they ever become problems. When we pay attention to what other people have to say, we could pick up on certain warning signs or red flags that indicate there might be a problem. This may be especially helpful in the workplace, where the early identification of problems can assist us in solving them before they worsen and do more damage to the organisation. By maintaining an attitude of active listening, we can remain one step ahead of the curve and take preventative measures to address possible difficulties before they balloon into serious concerns.

However, listening is not always an easy task, and there is sometimes the temptation to disregard the viewpoints of others or to disregard what we have heard. This might be especially true when we have strong feelings about a topic or assume that we already know all of the solutions to the questions about that topic. In these kinds of circumstances, it is essential to keep in mind the significance of active listening and to make a concerted effort to set aside our own preconceptions and points of view in order to give full attention to what other people have to say.

The proverb “the idiot talks, and the wise listen” is another example of a proverb that emphasises the need of speaking intelligently. While it is crucial to communicate, it is equally as important to be careful of both the content of our words and the manner in which we deliver them. It is possible for us to inflict hurt and destroy relationships when we talk hastily or without giving consideration to the ramifications of our words. If we choose our words carefully, we can ensure that they have a constructive effect, which will assist in the development of relationships and the resolution of disagreements.

This is especially essential in professional situations, where the words we choose to use may have a tremendous influence not just on our own careers but also on the performance of the businesses we work for. When we choose our words carefully, we are able to convey our intellect, expertise, and professionalism to others, and we also contribute to establishing a reputation for being an authority in our industry. On the other hand, if we talk rashly or without giving our words much thought, we run the risk of damaging both our reputation and the professional ties we have.

To summarise, the proverb “the idiot talks, and the wise listen” serves as a timely reminder of the significance of both listening attentively and speaking intelligently. The ability to listen is a crucial asset that may be used to obtain fresh views, create connections, and tackle potential difficulties before they become problems. Our comprehension of the world may be expanded, and our ability to collaborate with individuals in our immediate environment can be improved, if we are attentive listeners. In the meanwhile, using our words correctly may help us make a favourable impression on others and enhance our image as a knowledgeable and professional people. We may improve our ability to communicate effectively and achieve more success in both our personal and professional lives if we place a high value on both listening and speaking.

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Poetic License: ‘An April Fool for Poetry’

By joe pacheco - | apr 8, 2024.

PHOTO PROVIDED Joe Pacheco

An April Fool was I for poetry,

For jests and tricks and play with irony,

Fooling the Muse with rhyme tomfoolery —

Every verse footloose and fancy free.

Until a world too wise and wide for me

Turned my fool’s errand into odyssey

To roam as far as my mind’s eye could see

Horizons glowing with discovery.

No fool am I now for poetry,

For mindless myth and made-up history,

The “cruelest month” now kind as kind can be,

And poetry’s no longer a fool for me.

Recipe of the Week: Caesar Salad Cacio e Pepe

Faces on Faith: Restoring the child in each of us

The Fool Speaks, and the Wise Listen

Minahil Mohsin
July 26, 2023
CSS , CSS Solved Essays
42270 Views

CSS 2023 Solved Essay | The Fool Speaks, and the Wise Listen

Minahil Mohsin, a student of Sir Syed Kazim Ali, has attempted the CSS 2023 essay “ The Fool Speaks, and the Wise Listen ” on the given pattern, which Sir Syed Kazim Ali teaches his students. Sir Syed Kazim Ali has been Pakistan’s top English writing and CSS, PMS essay and precis coach with the highest success rate of his students. The essay is uploaded to help other competitive aspirants learn and practice essay writing techniques and patterns to qualify for the essay paper.

1- Introduction

People who speak without a check make a fool of themselves in others’ eyes. They lack sensitivity and insight and thus know not when they must put a halt to their talking. On the other hand, wisdom breeds patience, and intellectual people are considerate towards others’ opinions for the sake of self-growth.

2- Understanding the African Proverb

3- Why is Speaking Much Considered the Trait of Fools?

“Any Fool Can Criticize, Condemn and Complain, And Most Fools Do.” – Benjamin Franklin
“You Are Not Learning Anything When You Are Talking.” – Lyndon B. Johnson
“People Who Keep Talking Talk, For They Are Scared of Getting Silent and Being Proven Wrong.” – Democritus
“When Fools Speak, the Wise Listen, But When the Wise Speak, the Fools Argue.” – Noam Chomsky
Political Parties and Politicians Criticizing Each Other on Irrational Grounds

4- Why is Listening Considered the Wise’s Priority?

Case in Point: Mahatma Gandhi, who sought out diverse perspectives to inform his own beliefs and actions
Case in Point: Good Communication – The Key to a Successful Marriage
Case in Point: Good Communication Between a Doctor and Patient is Crucial to Proper Diagnosis and Treatment
Case in Point: Research Proving that Employees Who Feel Heard and Valued by Their Managers Are Four Times More Likely to be Satisfied with their Jobs and Perform Better
Case in Point: A Mentor-Mentee Relationship, Where the Mentor Shares his Expertise, and the Mentee Actively Listens and Learns
Case in Point: The World Bank’s Mediation to Resolve the Water Conflict Between Pakistan and India

5- How Could Good Listening Skills Be Instilled in Men?

By Being Present with the One Speaking
By Developing a Learning Attitude
By Not Waiting to Talk and Acting Wisely
By Choosing a Response Carefully

6- Is Speaking Always a Foolish and Listening Always a Wise Thing to do? A Critical Analysis

Showing Charisma and Charm – A Sign of Leadership
Speaking Without Thinking at Times Brought About by Excitement, Adding Energy to a Conversation
Listening at Length, Often Difficult, Draining, and Boring
Listening to Counter Arguments, a Challenging Feat

7- Conclusion

Extensive English Essay and Precis Course for CSS & PMS Aspirants

The primary source of human communication, speech, is the crucial tool that can make or break a man’s personality. People who speak without a check make a fool of themselves in others’ eyes. They lack sensitivity and insight and thus know not when they must halt their talking. Moreover, they hold such a high opinion of themselves – evident in politicians’ speeches worldwide – that merely talking for the sake of talking becomes the sole purpose of their lives. On the other hand, wisdom breeds patience. Intellectual people are considerate towards others’ opinions for the sake of self-growth. For instance, Gandhi is known to seek out diverse perspectives to develop his own beliefs and ideas. Not only this, but good listeners can also foster positive personal and professional relationships. Nevertheless, it is not always the case that the talkers are fools and listeners, wise, for adept speech is a quality of skilful leaders, and listening for hours on end can drain a person of his energy and make him grumpy. However, being a good listener when the speakers are wise is a much-needed skill that can be developed by developing a learning and receptive attitude. This and only this can help the masses avoid regrets and misconceptions arising from unbridled speech. This essay elaborates on why speaking is a fool’s and listening to a wise person’s priority and how could good listening skills be instilled in men to promote a culture of productivity.

“A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something.” Plato

The given statement is a proverb originated in Africa. Literally, it means that a senseless person is prone to speaking at length while he, with a sagacious mind, tends to stay quiet and listen to those speaking around or to him. The former is so busy speaking that he hardly finds any time to think, but the latter considers active listening his biggest strength that he uses to win over people.

To elaborate, fools are very low on the spectra of receptivity and sensitivity. Where a wise person is able to assess a situation and analyze whether he needs to speak or stay quiet, a stupid person just knows how to go on and on all occasions. He lacks the knowledge and insight about any given topic of discussion, and thus, his words are nothing but mumbo-jumbo. Benjamin Franklin elaborates it by saying, “Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do.” It means that speaking at length is the common trait of fools. Hence, foolish people lack the sense to consider the time, place, and company before speaking.

Next to it, fools have little interest in learning new things. They mindlessly talk about whatever goes on in their head, contrary to wise people who always look forward to spending a productive time listening to others to get different perspectives. As unwise people are indifferent to gaining knowledge, they talk merely for the sake of talking. As former American President Lyndon B. Johnson has said, “ You are not learning anything when you are talking” , fools possess little knowledge and insight. Thus, fools speak because they do not want to learn anything by listening.

Moreover, foolish people are insecure by nature. They are always conscious of not giving others a chance to prove them wrong. They are not like wise people whose words are weighed and calculated but like chatterboxes that simply do not know when to pause. And it is nature’s rule that the more one talks the more there are chances of his getting off the track and saying wrong things. Democritus has advocated for the same by saying, “People who keep talking talk, for they are scared of getting silent and being proven wrong.” It is, indeed, true that if there are loopholes in their utterance, fools will avoid getting quiet and giving others a chance to ridicule them. So, unintelligent people are scared of being called out for their mistakes.

Owing to their non-stop chain of meaningless talks, mindless people find themselves stuck in the shackles of naivety. Where wise people listen to others’ opinions, fools fail to develop a sense of reasoning and respecting others’ perspectives because they are not used to listening to anybody else. Thus, the moment they are confronted with somebody holding an opinion opposite or even slightly different to theirs, they become ready to blow a fuse. They react very quickly and extremely negatively, the reason for which is well-explained in Noam Chomsky’s words, “When fools speak, the wise listen, but when the wise speak, the fools argue.” It means that fools have little space in their brains to accommodate alien ideas. So, foolish people are quite irascible and easily annoyed.

Finally, all these traits make the fools indulge in a false belief of them being perfect beings. They never even entertain the fact that they might be wrong, unlike wise people who are always overtaken by self-doubt. Fools hold their own opinions so high that they outright disregard and reject any opposing perspectives. A vivid description of this fact is the political system around the globe. In every developing democracy, politicians consider it their sole duty to criticize and find faults with their opponents, putting aside national and public interests. These irrational fights are driven by nothing but ego. So, fools are greatly inclined to get indulged in unproductive verbal fights just to prove their might.

Conversely, wisdom breeds silence, contentment, and active listening. Where the fools are all about speech, wise people are never the ones to make haste when it comes to talking. Rather, they prefer listening to others to improve their own critical thinking skills and memory. By listening to others, they get to form their unique perspective of life, and their points of view are no longer limited by conventional wisdom and expectations. For instance, Mahatma Gandhi is known to have sought out diverse perspectives to inform his own beliefs and actions. As a result, he absorbed criticism and opinions, developing his political dogma and making him one of the most renowned leaders in history. Thus, wise people listen to develop their personalities.

“A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.” Bruce Lee

Stepping up from the individual level, the quality of listening also assists men in their domestic relationships. Although men indeed learn from their mistakes, when people are open to advice and opinions, they get the opportunity to learn valuable lessons from others’ experiences as well. This way, creative solutions, better relations, and discoveries pave their way into human beings’ lives. A case in point is that of a successful marriage that can only result if the two wheels, man and wife, listen to each other rather than trying to impose their separate wills. Paying attention to what the other wants to convey proves the key to healthy marital relationships. In short, being attentive towards others is another trait of the wise to ensure better bondage in their domestic lives.

Similarly, when men enter their practical lives, professional relations and conduct also demand wisdom for growth. This wisdom lies in respecting and regarding those superior to one in knowledge and know-how. Those who fail to respect this difference and continue their gibberish fail to gain an advantage from professionals in the field. Whereas, those who consider professionals’ opinions and follow them gain many benefits. For instance, good communication between a doctor and a patient is crucial to proper diagnosis and treatment. Patients who pay heed to their doctors’ instructions get several health benefits by following the guidelines. So, it is evident that listening carefully to professional advice helps in wise decision-making for one’s own good.

Further, listening to others also holds great significance for wise people on an institutional level. When those in authority pay heed to what their subordinates say, the subordinates feel greatly empowered and more motivated to do a good job. On the other hand, employers who treat their team members as mere employees and never give importance to their opinions are much less likely to grow in their field. To support the stance, recent research by the Employee Satisfaction Index also proves that employees who feel heard and valued by their managers are four times more likely to be satisfied with their jobs and, thus, perform better. So, wisdom lies in giving others importance and making their presence feel worthy by listening to what they have to say.

Extrapolating this very impact on the organizational level, it is witnessed that wise people develop empathy and collaboration, broaden their horizons, resolve conflicts tactfully, and clarify misconceptions skillfully just by listening to others and observing the goings on around them. Such people also develop a high-grade emotional intelligence, unlike those whose only focus is to blow their own trumpet in every conversation they have. A great example could be found in a study by Scientific American on a positive mentor-mentee relationship, where a mentor shares his expertise, and the mentee actively listens to him and learns. A wise mentee would do his best to make the most of his mentor’s advice by carefully listening to and noting down his instructions to become more creative and excel professionally. So, by allowing themselves to be exposed to professional advice, wise people are able to become all the wiser in their business interactions.

Finally, global problems also find their solutions in the wise’s listening. On such a huge scale, it is only by listening to multiple perspectives that can help countries make the most informed decisions and improve international relations. Contrarily, countries that do not believe in listening to the international community’s voice find themselves isolated and loathed, much like the case of Russia. For the countries willing to resolve their issues through diplomatic means, mediators come and use active listening to understand the perspectives of all parties involved in order to solve the issues at hand. For instance, the World Bank has played a mediating role in helping Pakistan and India put a halt to their timeless water dispute. The Bretton Woods Institute has considered both countries’ problems and concerns and then given a sagacious solution, following which both parties have witnessed amelioration of the issue mentioned above. So, the wisdom of listening and its pros also apply to countries in the arena of international relations.

Keeping in view the uncountable merits of being a good listener and its connection with attaining wisdom, it is the need of the hour that the youth develops this quality to excel in their personal and professional lives. The first thing one can do to become an active listener is to be present with the one who is speaking. It means that one should be mentally active while listening to somebody else talk so that the act is not merely hearing but productive absorption of the words the speaker delivers.

Second, one can become a proactive listener by developing a learning attitude. In this way, one can avoid regrets due to over-speaking and miscommunicating in a conversation. A learning attitude would help the listener develop the capability of assessing and analyzing a situation, speaking only when needed, and saying only what is necessary. It will also assist him in improving his knowledge and insight on various topics and themes.

Third, one must stop listening just to respond and waiting only to talk. Rather, one should stay calm and composed while a speaker makes his point and focus on what he is saying. Finally, a listener should try to get to the bottom of all the claims a speaker makes and analyze them in terms of his own experiences. In this way, if one listens to others, not only would they want to listen to him, but also would he develop such wisdom that people would also start considering him a prudent man.

Along the same lines, one must learn how to respond in a certain situation. After developing a sense of assessing a situation and listening carefully to what is being said, a person should be mindful of his own words. It is crucial he does not become a social media warrior, attacking people with words and not considering what impact they might have on somebody’s mental health. So, words should be chosen carefully after understanding the situation at hand.

In a strong analysis of the discussion, one can deduce that fools are talkative, and the wise, listeners. But a question arises; are all the talkative people foolish and the quiet ones wise? The answer here could be extracted after going through some facts. First, speaking is also a quality of charismatic leaders; people who are good at talking show good leadership qualities. More often than not, even thoughtless speaking is brought about by positive emotions like excitement, adding energy to a conversation. On the other hand, silence can become agony if one listens to someone speaking at length. It would be difficult, draining, boring, and even challenging if the speaker’s notion is against one’s beliefs. So, in lieu of generalizing the connection between fools and speaking and the wise and listening, a balance must be struck between the two, and none prioritized over the other to gain the maximum benefit from each activity.

“It is better to remain silent and thought a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt.” Mark Twain

In conclusion, all the arguments boil down to a single stance that foolish people have a severe lack of sensitivity, interest in learning, confidence in their knowledge, and control of their temper. Simply put, they are too immature to know what to speak and when to say it. So, all they do is speak without a pause. On the other side, there are the wise – calm, composed, and sagacious. They not only pay attention to but also respect others’ opinions and perspectives and use them to build their own unique take on life and its happenings, as could be seen in Gandhi’s example. Moreover, such people are also masters of conflict resolution and developing relationships, for their traits help them learn from their surroundings. Therefore, although the two qualities, talking and listening, cannot be objectively judged, still, there is a need to develop better listening habits by practising active listening and developing a learning attitude so that discussions could be more productive, and wisdom spread throughout the masses.

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Wise fool
The wise fool, or the wisdom of the fool, is a form of literary paradox in which, through a narrative, a character recognized as a fool comes to be seen as a bearer of wisdom. [2] A recognizable trope found in stories and artworks from antiquity to the twenty-first century, the wisdom of the fool often captures what Intellectualism fails to ...
The Wisdom of the Fool
1. a person with little or no judgment, common sense, wisdom, etc.; silly person; simpleton. 2. a man formerly kept in the household of a nobleman or king to entertain by acting as a clown; professional jester. 3. a victim of a joke or trick; dupe. Well, Webster seems to think "the wisdom of the fool" is an oxymoron.
Literary Blueprints: The Wise Fool
The Wise Fool can sometimes merge with the Trickster. Famous Faces: Beginning with the Greeks, Philippus in Xenophon's Symposium and Thersites in Homer's Iliad both fill the role of the Wise fool. Shakespeare loved a Wise Fool, as evidenced by Twelfth Night's Feste and the infamous Falstaff (The Merry Wives of Windsor and Henry IV).
Analysis of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Gimpel the Fool
"The Saint as Schlemiel." In Critical Essays on Isaac Bashevis Singer, edited by Grace Farrell, 61-65. New York: G. K. Hall, 1996. Malin, Irving, ed. Critical Views of Isaac Bashevis Singer. ... Siegel, Paul N. "Gimpel and the Archetype of the Wise Fool." In The Achievement of Isaac Bashevis Singer, edited by Marcia Allentuck, 159 ...
William Shakespeare Shakespeare's Clowns and Fools
All Shakespeare's fools correspond to the Erasmian sage-fools in their satirical function: "what word coming out of a wise man's mouth were an hanging matter, the same yet spoken by a fool shall ...
The Wisdom in Folly: An Examination of William Shakespeare's Fools in
chapter will similarly handle the wise fool in King Lear. Analogous to Feste, Lear's nameless Fool is exceedingly sharp, obscured by mystery, and surrounded by others of lesser wit. Over the course of the play the audience bears witness to the King himself falling into the role of the natural fool, and eventually even usurping Lear's Fool's
Gimpel the Fool, Isaac Bashevis Singer
Isaac Bashevis Singer's "Gimpel the Fool" is the tale of a gullible baker, his faithless wife, and the devil who tempts the baker to settle old scores. Singer's theme is that of the wise fool ...
Gimpel the Fool Essays and Criticism
Early in his torments the rabbi had advised 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 ...
Shakespeare: Twelfth Night
His contemporary status is different, and Shakespeare's plays have become a symbol of culture and education, being widely used as a subject for academic study and literary criticism. A close critical analysis of Twelfth Night can reveal how Shakespeare manipulates the form, structure, and language to contribute to the meaning of his plays. Form.
The Pastoral Implications of Wise and Foolish Speech in the Book of
The essay closes by applying the wise speech of Proverbs to everyday-ministry settings. Advertise on TGC. 1. Major Characters in Proverbs: The Simple, the Fool, and the Wise Man ... the righteous-wise and the wicked-fool. In making this distinction, I am not ignoring how Proverbs uses a number of words are for different kinds of people. For ...
The Wise Fool
The Fool in King Lear is anything but a fool. He is a morosoph, a wise fool. Disguised as mockery or oblique comment, Lear's Fool can say things others hesitate to say, and point out the king's real folly. George Bernard Shaw once said, "Every despot must have one disloyal subject to keep him sane.".
Joe as the Wise Fool in
ABSTRACT. Criticism of Great Expectations often portrays Joe, a gentle blacksmith, as important to the novel's definition of a true gentleman. While this is understandable, Joe plays a more important role in the novel's discussion of the contemporary literature of success to propagate the ideal of the self-made man. This role is as a wise fool and truth-teller, through whom Dickens highlights ...
A Wise Fool in King Lear by Shakespeare
The fool is a symbol of a wiser power that acts as an inner conscience for King Lear. Even though the fool is perceived as ignorant, he is actually a wise character. He begins by stating what a bad idea it was for King Lear to give away his power to his two daughters. "When thou clovest thy/ crown i' th'back o'ver the dirt.
foolear The Wise Fool in Shakespeare's King Lear Essay
Here the Fool warns Lear that his two daughters will have control over him due to his actions. Although Lear doesn't want to hear the truth and therefore tries to avoid it, the Fool essentially forces it out into the open through his speeches. He often uses comedic verses of saying to highlight the point he is trying to put across.
The Wise Fools Of Shakespeare Summary Essay Example
The Wise Fools of Shakespeare. "Infirmity that decays the wise doth ever make a better fool" - though uttered by one of his own characters Shakespeare does not seem to conform to this ideal. The fools carved by Shakespeare in his plays showed no resemblance to the mentally and physically challenged people who were treated as pets and used ...
Wise fool
foolear The Wise Fool in Shakespeare's King Lear Essay. 1325 Words; 6 Pages; 2 Works Cited; foolear The Wise Fool in Shakespeare's King Lear Essay. The Wise Fool in King Lear Whether or not the role of the Fool is an important one within King Lear is arguable. Although he seems to have great insight into much of the plays main events, he seems ...
The Wise Fools of Shakespeare
1868 Words. 8 Pages. Open Document. The Wise Fools of Shakespeare "Infirmity that decays the wise doth ever make a better fool" - though uttered by one of his own characters Shakespeare does not seem to conform to this ideal. The fools carved by Shakespeare in his plays showed no resemblance to the mentally and physically challenged ...
Benjamin Disraeli: 'The fool wonders, the wise man asks.'
The act of questioning becomes their compass, leading them on a journey of intellectual growth.While Disraeli's quote implies that the wise man asks questions, the introduction of wonder as a parallel concept reminds us that there can be profound beauty in simply wondering. Wonder ignites our imagination, allowing us to appreciate the mysteries ...
The Praise of Folly: The Praise of Folly Summary & Analysis
While a wise person shuts themselves away, avoiding the risk of shame and fear, the fool is free from such constraints. As such, the fool can gain prudence through worldly experience that the wise person cannot. Folly lays claim to two more staples of the human experience: art and prudence.
Essay on "The fool speaks, and the wise listen"
Essay on "The fool speaks, and the wise listen". The old saying that "the idiot talks, and the wise listen" is a timeless reminder of the significance of listening as well as the risks associated with speaking too quickly or too much. This proverb emphasises the importance of being a good listener as well as recognising the worth of ...
Poetic License: 'An April Fool for Poetry'
An April Fool was I for poetry, For jests and tricks and play with irony, Fooling the Muse with rhyme tomfoolery — Every verse footloose and fancy free. Until a world too wise and wide for me Turned my fool's errand into odyssey To roam as far as my mind's eye could see Horizons glowing […]
The Fool Speaks, and the Wise Listen
This essay elaborates on why speaking is a fool's and listening to a wise person's priority and how could good listening skills be instilled in men to promote a culture of productivity. "A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something." Plato. The given statement is a proverb originated in Africa.
Wise Fool Essay
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