Previous
Foreshadowing
Part 1, Chapter 1: Arrival
Explanation and Analysis:
The Magic Mountain is a bildungsroman, or a “coming of age” story. It follows Hans Castorp, a young man from Hamburg, Germany, whose plans to find employment as an engineer are derailed during a trip to see his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, who is being treated for tuberculosis in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. At the beginning of the novel, Mann emphasizes Hans’s youthful immaturity:
He had not planned to take this trip particularly seriously, to become deeply involved in it. His intention had been, rather, to put it behind him quickly, simply because that was how things had to be, to return quite the same person he had been at departure, and to pick up his life again where he had been forced to leave it lying for the moment. Only yesterday he had been totally caught up in his normal train of thought, preoccupied with what had just occurred, his exams, and with what was about to occur, his joining the firm of Tunder and Wilms [...]
At first, Hans imagines his visit to the sanatorium, the Berghof, as a brief period of rest, one that he intends to put “behind him quickly” before beginning his training at an engineering firm. While traveling to the sanatorium, located in the alpine resort town of Davos, he imagines that he will “return quite the same person he had been at departure” and resume his life. His thoughts, at this early point in the novel, center upon relatively mundane but practical concerns, such as exams.
Despite these initial intentions, Hans ends up staying in the sanatorium for seven years. The novel, then, traces the development of his character and thoughts as he meets a variety of eccentric characters at the Berghof, some of whom serve as mentors to him. Rather than growing wiser, however, Hans only grows more confused as he struggles to reconcile the various philosophies to which he is introduced and to apply those philosophies to his own life. For this reason, some scholars regard The Magic Mountain as both a bildungsroman and a satire of the genre.
Related Themes:
