Isaac Bashevis Singer, in the short story "Gimpel the Fool," presents the pitiful character Gimpel and takes him on a journey of spiritual awakening which allows him to transcend all the ridicule to which his tormentors have subjected him all is life. The most particular and painful mockery in this story concerns Gimpel's being made a cuckold, many times over, by his adulterous wife Elka. When we consider the question of how love and desire transform Gimpel, the only answer is that Gimpel's love for his wife (as misplaced and even deranged as that love certainly is), his desire to believe in other people no matter how often they mistreat and deceive him, and finally his faith in God at the moment of temptation, are what save and transform him. The problem with seeing Gimpel as a transformed man is that he is a good man from the very beginning of the story, so that it is difficult to see him as radically changed in the sense that we normally understand the word "transformed." It is true, nevertheless, that Gimpel does come to a new appreciation for his own faith and love, and a new convincement with respect to the goodness and righteousness of his role in life.
Early on in the story, as the butt of many a joke and trick in his town, Gimpel seeks advice from the rabbi, who tells the poor man:
It is written, better to be a fool all our days than for one hour to be evil. you are not a fool. They are the fools. For he who causes his neighbor to feel shame loses Paradise himself (99).
This may be true, and it is certainly the argument of the entire story that it is true, but it does not save Gimpel from much pain as the target of ridicule and cruelty. His wife is the main culprit in his evil done against him. He does not know it, but none of the six children she has while married to him are his own children. She is not even sure which of the many men she has slept with while married actually fathered the children. He actually ca...