On Joy and Sorrow by Kahlil Gibran

Full Text

Then a woman said, Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.
And he answered:
Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Overview

"On Joy and Sorrow" presents Gibran's philosophy of emotional interdependence. Rather than treating joy and sorrow as opposites, Almustafa reveals them as two faces of the same experience. The depth of one determines the capacity for the other—a profound reframing of how we understand suffering.

Line-by-Line Analysis

Lines 1-2

A woman asks about joy and sorrow together, not separately—she intuits they're connected. Almustafa's answer confirms this intuition.

Lines 3

"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked" — Joy doesn't replace sorrow but reveals what sorrow was hiding. They share the same face.

Lines 4

The well metaphor: laughter and tears rise from the same source within us. Our emotional capacity is singular, not divided.

Lines 5

"And how else can it be?" — The rhetorical question suggests this truth is self-evident once seen. There is no other way emotions could work.

Lines 6

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain" — Sorrow is a carving tool, creating space. Without depth of sorrow, joy has nowhere to fill.

Themes

• The interdependence of joy and sorrow
• Emotional depth through suffering
• The unity of opposites
• Acceptance of the full human experience
• Transformation through pain

Literary Devices

Metaphor

"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked" — Joy and sorrow as masks of the same face—neither is more real than the other.

Extended Metaphor

The well that holds both laughter and tears — Our emotional life as a single container, filled by different experiences but unified in source.

Personification

"sorrow carves into your being" — Sorrow becomes a sculptor, actively shaping our interior space.

Rhetorical Question

"And how else can it be?" — Invites readers to recognize this truth as inevitable, not merely one perspective.

Historical Context

Gibran wrote during a period of immense personal sorrow—the deaths of his mother, sister, and half-brother within a few years. This poem reflects his hard-won wisdom about grief's role in expanding emotional capacity.