Abraham Simpson
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Simpsons character | |
 |
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| Abraham Jimmy Simpson | |
| Gender | Male |
|---|---|
| Job | Retired soldier / Retired Cranberry Silo Night Watchman |
| Relatives | Father: Orville Simpson Sibling: Cyrus Wife: twice divorced Ex-Wives: Mona Simpson(deceased) , Selma Bouvier Children: Homer and Herb and a illegitimate daughter Grandchildren: Bart, Lisa and Maggie (See also Simpson family) |
| Voice actor | Dan Castellaneta |
| First appearance | |
| Ullman shorts | "Grampa and the Kids" |
| The Simpsons | "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire" |
Abraham "Abe" "Grampa" J. Simpson is a fictional character featured in the animated cartoon television series The Simpsons, voiced by Dan Castellaneta. He is the patriarch of the Simpson family, the father of Homer Simpson, and the grandfather of Bart, Lisa, and Maggie Simpson.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
Almost all of Grampa's biographical information is supplied by himself. Many of his stories seem to be wildly inaccurate, often physically or historically impossible, and occasionally inconsistent even with each other, suggesting that Abe is quite senile. As such, all information provided is taken with a grain of salt. Additionally, he suffers from narcolepsy.
Abraham J. Simpson, known as "Grampa" Simpson, was born in the "Old Country"; he apparently does not remember which country exactly. In the episode "Million Dollar Abie", he claims to be 83 years old, although he is sometimes described as older. He boasts of having been a watchman at Pearl Harbor, and claims that President Grover Cleveland spanked him on two nonconsecutive occasions. He also claimed to have "taken a shot" at President Theodore Roosevelt.
Abe claims to be a veteran of World War I, having joined the army at a very young age by lying about it, although little is known about his supposed, if implausible, experiences in the conflict. Moreover, Abe's recollections of his later experiences in World War II are also sometimes implausible, even though he certainly did fight in it. Abe was not initially keen to fight in Europe. After the United States declared war he supposedly tried to avoid service by dressing in drag and playing for a women's baseball team in 1942, which kept him from serving for a year before he was eventually discovered. At the very end of war in Europe, Abe's unit "liberated" a stash of priceless art from surrendering German forces. Abe's unit, the Flying Hellfish, formed a tontine, and buried the art in a trunk at sea. Decades later, Montgomery Burns, then second surviving member of the unit, tried to murder Abe in order to get the art, prompting Abe to violate the tontine. When Abe and Bart retrieve the art from Burns after a spectacular confrontation, the State Department arrives to give the art to their "rightful" owner, a snooty young German aristocrat. In other episodes he claims to have served on PT109 with John F. Kennedy and as a naval aviator. He also claims to have spent a period behind German lines during the war, performing in drag for Nazi officers.
Abe fathered an illegitimate daughter in the United Kingdom the day before he joined the D-Day operations in Normandy. This daughter is seen in the same episode lending further credence to the idea that he served in Europe. Moreover, he once showed Bart and Lisa an album with photos of Germans killed by his platoon. He was also awarded the Iron Cross for accidentally directing U.S. jeeps and tanks into Nazi minefields and off of cliffs. Abe was not a particularly caring father to Homer, as evidenced at one point when he tells his son, "Homer, you're dumb as a mule and twice as ugly. If a strange man offers you a ride, I say take it!" Homer does not normally appear to resent these casual abuses, though in one episode in which Abe calls Homer an accident, years of pent up anger on Homer's part leads to a temporary estrangement. Homer also takes every opportunity to ignore or eject his father, whom he placed in a dilapidated retirement home. Abe held a variety of postwar jobs, including a farmer in Homer's early childhood until the bank foreclosed. Abe was also a watchman at a cranberry silo for forty years. He spent most of this time living in a house he won on a crooked 1950s game show until he sold it to help Homer buy a house for his family. Abe moved in with the family, but was sent to a retirement home about three weeks later. In Barting Over, Homer claims that he sent his father to a cheap retirement home to retaliate for being mistreated by his father. There are also several bits of proof that Abe used to strangle Homer in a way similar to the way Homer strangles Bart, crying "Why you little!" and grasping him by the neck. In fact this may have inspired Homer's way of strangling Bart, as can be seen by comparing the two methods.
Abraham Simpson is estranged husband to Mona Simpson, father to Homer Simpson, father-in-law to Marge Simpson and grandfather to siblings Bart, Lisa and Maggie. He also fathered two illegitimate children; a daughter named Abbie by a British lady named Edwina while in England during World War II and Herbert Powell with a carnival hooker. He was briefly married to Amber, the same woman Homer married on a drinking binge in Vegas. Also in The Simpsons Uncensored Family Album, the family tree shows his parents' names to be Orville Simpson and Yuma Hickman. Abe's brother Cyrus appeared in the Simpsons Christmas Stories episode. Cyrus lives in Tahiti with multiple native wives.
He was married for several years to Mona, who became entranced with the hippie lifestyle after seeing Joe Namath's hair on TV. She became a fugitive from justice after she abetted in the sabotage of a biological weapons research lab owned by Montgomery Burns. Abe tells a six-year-old Homer that Mona died while Homer was at the movies.
He took a job as the Sprawl-Mart greeter in the Season 15 episode The Fat and the Furriest, but then lost it in On a Clear Day I Can't See My Sister.
Also, in That 90's Show, Abraham Simpson owned a laser tag warehouse.
[edit] Personality
Grampa Simpson is an old, grizzled, periodically incontinent and quite senile man, who lives in the Springfield Retirement Castle; which is a sad, lonely place filled with demented, crippled and depressed old people. A sign near the entrance says "Thank you for not discussing the outside world." Abe also informs Lisa that residents are not allowed to read newspapers because "they angry up the blood". His closest friend appears to be Jasper, a fellow Retirement Castle resident, though they scuffled in Bart the General.
He spends a good deal of his time writing complaint letters. He once wrote to the President, complaining that there were too many states, and requesting that they get rid of three of them, simultaneously insisting that he was "not a crackpot." He also wrote to "the sickos at Modern Bride Magazine" about his disgust at not seeing "one wrinkled face" or "a single toothless grin" in the publication. He also owns a 49-star American flag, because of his undefined hatred of the state of Missouri: "I'll be deep in the cold, cold ground before I recognize Missourah."'
He often shares long-winded recollections about his past, many of which are often far-fetched rants. Among Grampa's stories are the time he chased Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1922, the time John D. Rockefeller dropped silver dollars on him while floating in a Zeppelin, various times spent harassing Springfield's Irish immigrant community, and listening to Thomas Edison recite the alphabet over the radio (as it was the only program available in the early days of broadcasting).
He also is soundly rooted in his antiquated ways: "The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it." Like many of his fellow Retirement Castle residents, Abe is a devoted follower of Matlock. He even supports tearing down the Simpsons' house in order to complete construction of the proposed "Matlock Expressway". He seems to believe Matlock is a real person, suggesting they call him in to solve real-life crimes: "I say we call Matlock. He'll find the culprit. It's probably that evil Gavin MacLeod or George 'Goober' Lindsey." During a Matlock public appearance, Abe and Jasper swipe Matlock's pills, which were needed to prevent him from having a spastic heart failure. Once, reflecting on his lifetime, he lamented it as terribly boring and full of unruly teenagers, but then decided it was alright because "we did have two shows with Andy Griffith".
In most episodes, he is readily recognizable as a member of the Simpson family. However, he is often used to portray a generic old man in the town of Springfield. This is especially evident in Lemon of Troy.
[edit] Character
[edit] Creation
Groening famously named the five main Simpson characters after members of his own family: his parents, Homer and Marge (or Marjorie in full), and his younger sisters, Lisa and Margaret (Maggie). Claiming that it was a bit too obvious to name a character after himself, he chose the name "Bart," an anagram of brat.[1][2] When it came time to give Grampa Simpson a first name, Groening says he refused to name him after his own grandfather, Abraham Groening, leaving it to other writers to choose a name. By coincidence, the writers chose the name Abraham, unaware that it was also the name of Groening's grandfather.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ BBC. (2000). The Simpsons: America's First Family (6 minute edit for the season 1 DVD) (DVD). UK: 20th Century Fox.
- ^ Duncan, Andrew (September 18-24 1999). Matt Groening. Radio Times. Retrieved on September 19, 2007.
- ^ Groening, Matt. (2002). The Simpsons season 2 DVD commentary for the episode "Old Money" [DVD]. 20th Century Fox.
[edit] External links
- Abe Simpson's profile at TheSimpsons.com
- Abraham Simpson at the Internet Movie Database
