Matt Rowan
Franz Kafka had a pretty good read on people. He recognized, among other things, the strange but vital interpersonal rules that enhanced one’s credibility or diminished it, depending on the circumstances and the individuals concerned. If you’re at all familiar with Black Mirror, the Channel Four and Netflix sci-fi / horror series, you might have caught the premiere episode of the third season. It concerns people living in a society where social media popularity translates to real societal value, and affects things as mundane as how people respond to you in passing to those as significant as where you’re allowed to live and work. The human dynamic of this scenario, abandoning the technological component, is quintessential Kafka terrain. One wonders what a depiction of social media would look like in his methodical and capable hands.
No more is Kafka’s talent for descrying nuance in just this sort of human behavior, the concept of what makes one a credible source, on display than in the story, “The Village Schoolmaster [The Giant Mole].” In it, readers are offered information regarding the piquant discovery of an abnormally large mole in the unnamed region’s countryside — hence the bracketed auxiliary title. But the brackets are a much better touch than one might first be given to assume. They hint at the kind of compartmentalization into which the mole is relegated throughout the story’s telling. At first blush it’s a story centering on a peculiar and inexplicable phenomenon not unlike other Kafka stories, such as “The Metamorphosis” and “Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor.” Instead, though, it is crafted to speak of issues very different, far less surreal than a giant mole, and much more characteristically human.
Accordingly, the story’s title does not bury the lede. It is, indeed, about the village schoolmaster who discovers the giant mole’s existence, first and foremost. Even more awkwardly it’s told through the first-person narration of a “Mr. So-and-So,” as designated by the village schoolmaster but this is according to the narrator, an individual also referred to as a businessman, and therefore of a rank suggesting he’s held in some esteem by society, esteem it’s safe to presume a lowly schoolmaster is beneath. And so the story begins to show its true nature, describing the contrivances of credibility and those possessing the means to adequately and convincingly argue their case, with all the superfluity accompanying any and every overture or public gesture. The truth can be manufactured, and it often is.
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