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Part 4, Chapter 4: Politically Suspect
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
Sunday afternoons also deviate from the sanatorium’s normal schedule, with residents taking carriage rides. It’s mostly the Russian women who participate in this activity. Hans watches Marusya and Madame Chauchat get into a carriage, laughing and chatting with each other. Each time he sees Madame Chauchat, he tries to recall the person she reminds him of, but he can’t recall the revelation he had in his dream. Joachim, meanwhile, watches Marusya with sad eyes. After supper that night, Hans parts ways with Joachim earlier than usual and returns to his room, falling fast asleep well before nine.
The longer Hans stays at the Berghof, the more rest he needs to function. This could be due to the simple fact of the physical toll the sanatorium exacts on Hans’s body—surely the high elevation of the Berghof’s mountain setting is a physically exhausting adjustment to make. But it also indicates that Hans is succumbing to the allure of the sanatorium despite his claims that he’s only a visitor passing through.
Themes
The following day brings another deviation from the norm when Krokowski delivers a lecture in the dining hall, something he does every other week. This talk is from a series called “Love as a Force Conducive to Illness.” The talks are essentially mandatory. Hans is excited and curious about the talk. But before, he decides to go on a long walk by himself—something that turns out to be a very bad decision. He wants to prove that he’s stronger and healthier than the residents—and he wants to get away from them for a bit, too. Joachim is wary and advises him not to overexert himself.
Hans’s careless decision to go for a long walk puts him at risk of missing Krokowski’s mandatory lecture. It seems like a pointed choice on Hans’s part to differentiate himself from the Berghof’s regular patients. The lectures are mandatory, yes, but only for permanent residents of the Berghof—and Hans, despite his growing affinity for the Berghof, is determined to prove that he’s merely a visitor and thus doesn’t have to follow the rules that real residents must follow.
Themes
Hans sets off after breakfast and breathes in fresh, open air. He starts up the slope of the mountain, singing and humming a song about love as a hikes. Soon, he’s singing at full volume, belting out nonsense sounds when he forgets the words. At once, however, he feels short of breath. He tries to push on but eventually must sit beside a pine tree and gather his breath. He feels suddenly overcome with despair and feels his neck spasming. Instinctively, he thinks of his aged grandfather, and the thought disgusts him. Hans continues up the mountain, nonetheless. Later, his nose starts to bleed, staining his suit. Hans lies down until his bleeding stops and feels himself transported out of his body, while his real self travels to an earlier time and place—back to when he was 13.
Hans’s singing seems to be another vain attempt to assert his vitality: he’s determined to prove to himself, more than anyone else, that he’s a healthy resident of ordinary society rather than a sickly resident of the Berghof. But his shortness of breath and his sudden memory of his aged grandfather, both of which seem to remind him of his mortality and the fragility of his body, suggest otherwise. Consequently, when he feels himself transported out of his physical body (apparently fading into a dream state of sorts), it suggests a conscious or subconscious desire to avoid confronting the discomfort revelation that he might not be as robust or physically healthy as he thought.
Themes
In Hans’s memory, he is in class—in seventh grade—talking to a boy named Pribislav Hippe, whom he has admired from afar for the past year. Hippe is a model student and the child of a history teacher. His appearance suggests his mixed origins: German and perhaps some Slavic-Wendish. All the children pick on him for his narrow, slanted eyes. Hans privately thinks of Hippe as his friend, though he doesn’t know him, and he gets a rush of joy whenever they cross paths or Hippe chances to look at him. After that one conversation in class, another year passes, and then Hippe transfers to another school. By that point, Hans has already forgotten about him.
This scene adds to the conflict between Western ideals (which Settembrini, with his humanist values, represents) and Eastern ideals (which Madame Chauchat and Hans’s rude Russian neighbors, with their bad manners and disrespect for social convention, represent). Hans’s fascination with Pribislav Hippe, with his “Slavic-Wendish” origins and “slanted” eyes, symbolically suggests that Hans has been drawn toward Eastern ideals from a young age.
Themes
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The conversation with Hippe happens when Hans is in drawing class. He doesn’t have a pencil. He has acquaintances he could ask but feels he knows Hippe best—which is odd, since he’s never even spoken to him. Hippe obliges, but he orders Hans not to break the pencil. Their conversation is brief, yet Hans feels happier than he has ever felt before. After he is finished with the pencil, he sharpens it and keeps a few of the shavings, storing them in his desk for a year or two. In the present, Hans wonders what happened to the shavings—he certainty never removed them, and so they might even still be in his desk at Uncle Tienappel’s. It’s Hippe, Hans now realizes, whom Frau Chauchat reminds him of. They look oddly similar.
Hans’s strong emotional attachment to Hippe’s pencil shavings illustrates the underlying irrationality of passion: Hans can neither explain his inability to throw away the pencil shavings nor his initial fascination with Hippe. This scene also solves the mystery an earlier scene left unanswered: it’s Hippe who Madame Chauchat reminds Hans of. This connection strongly suggests that Hans will become fixated on and perhaps even enchanted by Frau Chauchat now just as he was enchanted by Hippe as a youth.
Themes
With a start, Hans realizes he has to head back to the sanatorium to attend the lecture. The walk back is horrible, and he has to stop often to rest. He gets as far as the spa hotel in Platz when he realizes he won’t be able to make it back to Berghof on foot because he’s too spent, so he catches a ride with a delivery wagon headed for Dorf. When he arrives at the dining hall, he finds all the other residents gathered before Krokowski, who is already speaking.
In arriving late to a lecture that is mandatory for the Berghof’s residents, Hans reasserts his identity as a visitor just passing through and therefore not subject to the Berghof’s rules. This scene reaffirms the ambivalence that has come to characterize Hans’s attitude toward the Berghof: he’s drawn to it and wants to adopt the lifestyle it offers, yet he also wants to resist its pull. Ironically, of course, Hans’s disregard for social norms—it’s rude to show up late to a planned event—is exactly the sort of behavior he has observed and even admired in Berghof residents.
Themes
