Kafka’s work notoriously rejects easy summary, and his use of symbols in “The Village Schoolmaster” is no exception. Although the story’s central symbol, the mole, cannot be said to mean anything explicitly, it is tied in various ways to the two protagonists’ psychologies. Among the ways in which it connects to the men’s internal lives is by its elusiveness: the mole is the purported years-long object of the men’s efforts, yet neither of the men have actually seen it. In fact, most people in the village have forgotten all about it, leading readers of Kafka’s story to doubt whether it existed at all! This elusiveness, in turn, reflects the weakness of the grasp the protagonists have on their own motives: the schoolmaster’s alleged hopes to contribute to science in fact turn out to conceal a delusional lust for fame and wealth, while the narrator, at first professing a philanthropic desire to help the schoolmaster, in the end has no idea why he got involved in the first place. In this way, Kafka uses the mole itself as a symbolic commentary on the elusive, shifty, and slippery nature of people’s true motives.
The Mole Quotes in The Village Schoolmaster
All that he was concerned with was the thing itself, and with that alone. But I was only of disservice to it, for I did not understand it, I did not prize it at its true value, I had no real feeling for it. It was infinitely above my intellectual capacity.
These were my words; they were not entirely sincere, but what was sincere in them was obvious enough.
What interests one interests all the rest immediately. They take their views from one another and promptly make those views their own.
I didn’t consider what I was doing carefully enough at the time to be able to answer that clearly now. I wanted to help you, but that was a failure, and the worst failure I have ever had.
The Mole Symbol Timeline in The Village Schoolmaster
