<human>:  Who is the boatman in the story ‘The Boatman’?
<bot>: The boatman is a character in a short story by the author Franz Kafka. The story is about a man who goes to a town to sell his boat, but is not allowed to do so because he does not have the proper papers. The boatman is a metaphor for the man who has no place to live, and the town is a metaphor for the world.