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
The narrator muses about the nature of time and change. Without time, there would be no change. But because we measure time as circular motion, then time’s real change is “rest and stagnation,” with what’s happened in the past perpetually repeating into the future. These are the big ideas Hans considers, though he can’t settle on any concrete answers.
The narration continues to meditate on the tenuous and subjective nature of time, here reflecting on the challenges that humanity’s organization of time into circular motion (the cycles of seasons) poses regarding change and the passage of time.
Themes
Joachim, meanwhile, grows frustrated with his uncertain health, specifically the “Gaffky” scale used to measure residents’ health and chances of recovery. Some patients who have come in horribly ill score an inconceivably low score, whereas others who seem hardly ill at all score high. Joachim himself was at a “two” two weeks ago, yet now he’s a nine—and thus his chances of returning to the service are fading before his eyes. He declares that he’s going to leave this place one way or another, even if it kills him. Joachim’s obstinance makes Hans think about what Clavdia said about Joachim being sicker than he realizes, but he keeps these thoughts to himself. Ever since Mardi Gras, he's felt a bit guilty about not telling Joachim about his interaction with Clavdia, though he’s sure Joachim knows the gist.
Joachim’s frustration with the “Gaffky” scale gestures toward the meaningless and arbitrary nature of illness. He wants there to be some logic to his recovery—if he was a “two” two weeks ago, it should follow that he continues to improve, not suddenly shoot up to a “nine.” But illness doesn’t operate like a logical equation: it doesn’t imbue a person’s life with meaning, as Hans wants it to. And whether a person gets better has nothing to do with whether or not they actually get better, as Joachim wishes were the case. Hans hasn’t told Joachim about his conversation with Clavdia, likely because he knows practical, driven Joachim would not approve. Hans’s guilt at not telling Joachim illustrates Hans’s characteristic ambivalence: he wants to be irrationally in love with Clavdia, yet he also seems to know that it’s not good for him and that Joachim’s judgment is warranted.
Themes
Now, it’s been six weeks since Mardi Gras. Hans long ago returned Clavdia’s pencil to her, though he asked for a personal effect in return. She gave him her X-ray image, which Hans now carries around in his wallet. She promised to return (or intended to, anyway), but she isn’t sure when. Hans saw her step out of the sanatorium and into the carriage that was waiting for her. Like everyone else who leaves, she looked happy, just because leaving means that life will change—even if it’s uncertain how. Though she is physically absent, she remains present in Hans’s mind.
The fact that Hans carries Clavdia’s X-ray image around in his wallet—the way a “normal” person might carry around a lover’s normal, non-X-ray photo—reveals that his love for her is really a love for illness and a desire for freedom from social constraints.
Themes
As Clavdia sarcastically predicated, Hans’s fever did indeed rise after their interaction. As a result, Behrens starts giving him injections. On one such occasion, Hans mentions to Behrens the foolish optimism of people who choose to leave the Berghof, casually citing Clavdia as an example. He doesn’t know what the weather is like in Daghestan, where she said she was headed, but it can’t be great for her health. Then he admits to becoming casually acquainted with her just before her departure, and how unfortunate it was that it had to happen then. He also admits that she had no interest in keeping in touch via letters. Behrens laughs, noting that Clavdia is surely too lazy to write. Anyway, Behrens reassures Hans, she’ll surely be back—that’s just how it goes with people who leave too soon. When Hans interjects to ask Behrens how long he’ll be here, Behrens is evasive.
Hans’s raised temperature is played for comedy, but it also shows that his love for Clavdia is literally making him sick. That he continues to pine for her anyway suggests that he has embraced her view of morality, which holds that pleasure and freedom should take priority over virtue and adherence to bourgeois social norms, even (and perhaps especially) if such behavior leads to sin and self-destruction. Hans’s raised temperature and generally declining health suggest that he is indeed headed down a path of self-destruction—and for someone who can’t even be bothered to keep in touch with him.
Themes
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Alone, Hans thinks more about Clavdia’s not wanting to write to him. He decides it probably shouldn’t be that much of a big deal to him—after all, isn’t keeping in touch rather bourgeois, anyway? Still, it bothers him. Another thing troubling him is that, ever since Settembrini stormed out of the room on Mardi Gras, things have been rather cold between Hans and him. Hans figures Settembrini probably thinks he’s a lost cause.
Hans’s choice to interpret Clavdia’s refusal to write to him as a statement on her personal anti-bourgeois worldview rather that her indifference to him reveals his youthful naivety. It also illustrates the irrationality of his love: Clavdia is clearly not interested in him, yet he can’t admit defeat and try to move on, even if it’s alienating him from people like Settembrini who really do have his best interests at heart.
Themes
Settembrini breaks the silence one day in passing, with a reference to classical mythology. He asks Hans if Hans “like[]d the pomegranate” and then cautions him that those who taste the fruit of the underworld belong to that realm forever. Then he continues on his way. Once alone, Hans scowls at the unsolicited advice, but he’s also grateful that Settembrini has finally broken the ice.
Settembrini’s remark about the pomegranate alludes to the myth of Hades and Persephone. He’s suggesting that Clavdia, like Hades, has used a pomegranate (her sensuality) to tempt Hans into the underworld, or to lead him astray. Hans’s ambivalent response to Settembrini’s (admittedly rather patronizing) bit of advice shows that he’s not yet a lost cause: though Clavdia and all the pleasure and sin she represents have tempted him, he still respects the rational, virtuous values that Settembrini represents and wants Settembrini to continue to mentor him.
Themes
Several weeks later, at late breakfast on Easter, Settembrini asks Hans if he’s ever traveled across the ocean before. He tells Hans that the Easter eggs and rabbits that have been placed at each table remind him of life on a luxury ship: of the creature comforts that make one forget the endless horizon beyond. Hans listens to Settembrini philosophize a bit more about the Easter holiday, and then he responds with great praise, hoping to tell Settembrini everything he thinks Settembrini wants to hear. Then Settembrini makes a huge announcement: he’s leaving the sanatorium. Having been declared uncurable, staying here is just the same as leaving, and so he has chosen to leave and to accept whatever consequences will entail. He’s moving to Dorf, nearby, so it’s likely their paths will still cross. After that, Settembrini goes to live in town with Lukačnek, the ladies’ tailor.
Settembrini’s remark about the Easter place settings gestures toward the theme of time’s tenuous and subjective nature: the place settings are there to get residents in a festive mood, as though celebrating the holiday will add variety and thus punctuate the otherwise monotonous, predictable stretch of days most residents have before them. Settembrini’s announcement about leaving the sanatorium marks a major shift in his character, demonstrating his willingness not just to preach but also to act on his principles. Settembrini has been urging Hans to stop wasting his time at the Berghof and re-enter society. Now he makes good on his own advice, lending it greater validity.
Themes
Residents leave the Berghof against their best interests all the time. Frau Salomon, for example, who’d been there for a long time before Hans first arrived, left in a huff after Behrens declared that her condition had worsened and that she needed to stay for five more months. She returned to the damp, cold environment of her native Amsterdam—clearly a worse environment for her condition than the Berghof. Behrens is convinced that Frau Salomon will be back.
This passage raises the question of what course of treatment really is best for chronically ill patients. If a patient shows no signs of improving, is staying in the stupefying, monotonous environment of the Berghof really preferable to re-entering society and living a more purposeful life?
Themes
Meanwhile, Anton Karlovitch Ferge, whose condition was once so grave, takes over Settembrini’s spot at Hans and Joachim’s table, having made a remarkable and unexpected recovery. The cousins like the “simple martyr” and take to chatting and taking their constitutionals with him, though the melting snow makes the walking paths difficult to navigate. It’s March now, and soon new plant growth replaces the snow that formerly blanketed the meadow. When Hans expresses an interest in botany, Joachim sarcastically asks if it was Krokowski who inspired this new interest. Lately, Krokowski’s lectures have focused on botany. He has been talking about the link between love and death, citing as an example a type of morel mushroom that emits an odor of decay and is also an aphrodisiac.
There’s no real reason why Ferge, one of the gravely ill residents Hans visited as part of his crusade to dignify suffering, has recovered and other residents he visited, like Leila Gerngross, have died. Ferge’s recovery thus gestures toward the arbitrary and meaningless nature of illness and suffering, though Hans fails to recognize how this challenges his theory that suffering ennobles the suffering, apparently having already abandoned that old interest for a new one: botany. Hans’s shifting, short-lived intellectual pursuits reflect his youth and naivety. His beliefs are superficial and tenuous, and his failure to recognize this only further highlights his youth and inexperience.
Themes
Joachim’s sarcastic tone has nothing to do with botany, though. Even if Joachim doesn’t know why he’s been on edge lately, Hans does—a while back, Hans was chatting with Krokowski when the doctor stopped by to record everyone’s temperature, something that Joachim can surely make out through his room’s thin walls, though he doesn’t mention so to Hans. Joachim also made another discovery, which he has clearly decided is a betrayal: he saw Hans go into Krokowski’s “analytical pit” for a psychoanalysis session. Since then, though, Hans has stopped doing this.
Hans was opposed to psychoanalysis (not to mention treatment of any kind) when he first arrived at the Berghof, so his decision to begin sessions with Krokowski indicates that he has had a change of heart and believes that Krokowski’s theories about the link between repressed inner emotions and outer symptoms of physical illness. In a broader sense, then, Hans continues to reject Settembrini’s advice not to attach deeper meaning to illness and suffering.
Themes
