The Madman

“The Madman” (1918): is the first English book by Khalil Gibran, comprising thirty-five allegorical stories and prose poems. In “The Madman” are sharp, satirical stories of profound meaning that embody the bitterness of disappointment and the resentment of malice, ignorance, ossification, and Gibran made his hero a madman to make the saying: “A madman speaks and a sane person understands” come true. Or because the madman, as he claims, is the first step towards detachment, and he helps, as in his tradition and in the tradition of the Surrealist school, to perceive the secrets beyond the veil of the mind. The book deals with one subject, the problem of the self in its relationship with itself, with others, with the universe, and with God, and this subject is social and metaphysical. The book represents the walker upon himself and upon the traditions, values, and those who are free in them. The book is also a collection of proverbs that symbolize liberation, the rejection of traditions, and spiritual transcendence and longing for perfection, and that is in a simplified language that relies on effective drama, metaphors, and accurate and interesting analogies.