With difficulty, the schoolmaster secures a meeting with the unnamed scholar in hopes of raising awareness about the existence of the mole. The scholar dismisses the schoolmaster’s fixation on the mole, however, jokingly explaining away its supposed size as the result of good soil. The scholar’s insulting treatment of the schoolmaster later prompts the intervention of the narrator in the mole affair, after the schoolmaster writes of the affront. The scholar only appears briefly in the story, but is nevertheless a significant character; he symbolizes academia and the scientific community at large, a community whose attention the schoolmaster desperately wishes to catch. His curt dismissal of the schoolmaster, therefore, represents the schoolmaster’s broader failure to attract the respect and attention he craves.
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The Scholar Character Timeline in The Village Schoolmaster
The timeline below shows where the character The Scholar appears in The Village Schoolmaster. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
The Village Schoolmaster
One day, the schoolmaster secures a long-awaited appointment with a scholar and leaves his family waiting outside in the snow while the two meet. Pleading that...
(full context)
After hearing of the scholar’s coldness to the schoolmaster, the narrator, a businessman in an undisclosed city, becomes angry with...
(full context)
