The Village Schoolmaster

The village school teacher ( other tracks by Max Brod: " The Giant Mole" ) is a story by Franz Kafka, which arose from December 1914 to January 1915, was not completed and was published posthumously. A merchant and a village school teacher lead a futile struggle for the scientific recognition of the existence of a giant mole. However, it is not a common struggle, but an increasingly bitter conflict.

Content

Section 1

The narrator, a merchant, describes the case of a giant mole that turns up in a village that is admired by the people around, and publishes its existence a village school teacher in a small printed matter. The village school teacher can but reach no interest among scientists. A scholar made ​​him accept the fact that probably the black, fat earth guilty of the gigantism is. The village school teacher has made about this and his other bad experiences and his need of an addendum to its original font.

Section 2

By reading this Supplement to the narrator the fate of the village teacher is gone so to heart that he, without knowing details of the mole and the first printed matter, investigations were hiring. He wants to help the village school teacher deserved scientific reputation.

Section 3

But it does not arise fruitful cooperation. The village school teacher does not trust the merchant, misunderstands him, has also partly justified objections. The merchant, until the very humanitarian, like his counterpart bites similar in the mole - topic and now only holds his findings fit.

Section 4

He fails just as the village schoolmaster. He has also published a printed matter and later a disappointed addendum hereto. He now wants to withdraw from the case. At the last meeting with the village schoolmaster, he was at first so fond of helping, he would only have this as something very annoying quickly out of his apartment.

Text analysis and interpretation approach

Background

Kafka had heard in the fall of 1914, a soldier's story of a life-saving Mole in the trenches. He describes it in a diary entry from November 4. 1914. Due to the temporal relationship with the emergence of this narrative a reference is very likely.

The Giant Mole

The external appearance of the monstrous mole can be more reminiscent of a fable or a being from the panopticon. He will not be described scientifically. Only so much is said about him, that he might cause deadly aversion and is almost two meters tall. How is it exactly constituted for the story it's not interesting, because in the end it 's not about him.

The failure

It's about the relationship between the two, who are dedicated to this cause, and both fail time delay, both in their object of study as well as in their mutual relationship. The tragedy is that the enthusiasm of the village teacher and the compassion of the merchant does not lead to cooperation, but to a mutual self- reaming.

If one examines the reason for this, could use one that both could not cope with this scientific subject of Biology in need of proper education. In addition, when a pity, the other hope of prosperity was the driving force, so no scientific research urge. A scientific analysis is not presented in the text.

But what about the arising of knowledge experts? The above-mentioned scholars and a renowned agricultural newspaper comment completely unqualified and ignorant. They would certainly not called to give the subject application.

It's in the story but anyway just on the outskirts of a satirical science dispute, but rather the incompatibility of human endeavor.

Expenditure

  • All narratives. Edited by Paul Raabe, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1970, ISBN 3- 596-21078 -X.
  • The narratives original version, edited by Roger Herms, Fischer Verlag 1997, ISBN 3-596-13270-3.
  • Posthumous writings and fragments 1 Edited by Malcolm Pasley, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1993, pp. 310-313, 194-216.

Secondary literature

  • Peter- André Alt: Franz Kafka: The eternal Son. A Biography. C. H. Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53441-4.
  • Bernard Dieterle: Small posthumous writings and fragments 2 Add: Manfred Engel, Bernd aurochs (ed.): Kafka manual. Life - Work - effect. Metzler, Stuttgart, Weimar 2010, pp. 260-280, esp 266-268, ISBN 978-3-476-02167-0.
The Aeroplanes At Brescia Richard and Samuel Contemplation (Kafka) The Judgment The Stoker The Metamorphosis A Fratricide In the Penal Colony A Country Doctor (short story) Description of a Struggle A Crossbreed The Knock at the Manor Gate The Great Wall of China (collection) My Neighbor Prometheus (Kafka) Letter to His Father The Problem of Our Laws The City Coat of Arms A Little Fable The Silence of the Sirens Poseidon (Kafka) Investigations of a Dog The Married Couple Give It Up! (short story) The Departure (short story) The Burrow (short story)
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