<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 boatman is a man who lives in a small village on the banks of the river. He has a very strange hobby. He likes to go to the riverbank and throw rocks into the water. The rocks are so heavy that they sink straight to the bottom. The boatman then goes home and sits on his chair by the window and waits for the rocks to rise to the surface. When they do, he collects them and throws them back into the river.