Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Magic Mountain, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Time
Coming of Age
Death and Illness
East vs. West
Abstract Ideals vs. Lived Experience
Summary
Analysis
Hans and Joachim arrive at Joachim’s room. There, Joachim removes a thermometer from a leather case and takes his temperature. The process takes seven minutes, which seems like forever. Joachim notes that once you start paying attention to time, it “actually” seems to go so slowly. Hans says that “actually” is irrelevant—if it seems to take a long time, then it is a long time. Joachim argues that the world measures time objectively, with clocks and calendars. Hans continues to philosophize, countering that time must pass evenly in order to be measurable, and there’s no proof that this is the case. Instead, “all our measurements are merely conventions,” he argues. Joachim grumbles that his rising temperature must be “convention” too, then, since it got to over 100 degrees last night.
This returns to one of the book’s core themes: the malleable, subjective experience of time. Here, Joachim and Hans debate whether one’s subjective experience of time affects the reality of time itself. While Joachim believes that time is objective and unchanging (seven minutes is seven minutes, regardless of whether that amount of time “feels” fast or slow), Hans believes that time changes with a person’s subjective experience of it. The concept of time, in other words, has nothing to do with literal minutes or seconds (which are arbitrary measurements humans have invented to organize time’s passing) and everything to do with how one experiences it. The rather superficial and self-indulgent nature of Hans’s philosophizing reinforces his youthful naivety and his self-absorption.
Themes
Hans tells Joachim he’ll leave him be now—his head is spinning with ideas about time, and he doesn’t want to stress Joachim out over them. He tells Joachim he’ll see him at second breakfast, and with that, he heads to his own room for his “rest cure.”
Hans lets his passing fancies, however ill-formed or inconsequential they may be, take hold of his life. He doesn’t share Joachim’s disciplined, pragmatic approach to life.
Themes
In his room, Hans is amazed at how great it feels just to lie down. He sleeps for an hour, and then he and Joachim head down to breakfast. In the dining hall, Hans eats another hearty meal. He observes the other patients at his table and spots a young Russian woman, whose name, he overhears, is Marusya. Hans notes that Joachim won’t make eye contact with her and looks angry every time she speaks. Hans also spots members of the Half-Lung Club across the room, including Hermine Kleefeld.
Hans’s “rest cure” is particularly self-indulgent because it serves no immediate medical purpose: he’s resting out of idleness, not to recover from an illness like Joachim. Meanwhile, Joachim’s apparent disdain for Marusya, though unexplained at this point, will become important later on. At any rate, his anger suggests that he isn’t completely pragmatic and honorable and is just as vulnerable to human emotion as anyone else.
Themes
Joachim quietly points out a man wearing a leather jacket and a woman wearing a feathered hat and old feather boa sitting at the “Bad Russian” table and says they’re Hans’s neighbors. Hans stares at them coldly, something he’d usually never do, and is shocked at how good it makes him feel. Hans realizes that his breakfast beer—which normally would have only made him feel a bit relaxed—has completely incapacitated him. And he also realizes he’d like more than anything to be back in his room, lying down. As Hans and Joachim leave the dining hall to take a walk, Hans asks Joachim when the next rest cure is and if they’re going to walk very far.
Hans’s uncharacteristic rudeness suggests that the “magic” of the Berghof is already working on him: far removed from bourgeois society, he acts on his irrational whims and emotions, even if doing so would be unacceptable under normal circumstances. His desire to be back in his room is further evidence of the figurative “spell” the Berghof is casting on him: it’s almost as though the malaise of the sanatorium’s residents is more infectious than their physical illnesses. Of course, Hans’s exhaustion could also have a simpler explanation: he could literally be getting sick.
Themes
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