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Similes
Part 1, Chapter 3: In the Restaurant
Explanation and Analysis—An Old Water Hole:
Joachim describes himself, in a simile, as “an old water hole” when Hans arrives at the sanatorium:
It’s really sad, isn’t it? I had already been accepted and would have taken my officer’s exam next month. And here I am lounging about with a thermometer in my mouth and counting Frau Stöhr’s illiterate howlers, and time is passing me by. A single year plays such an important role at our age, it brings so many changes and so much progress with it when you’re living down below. And here I am stagnating like an old water hole—a stinking pond, and that’s not too crude a comparison, either.”
Though Joachim had hoped to make a speedy recovery, he has recently been told to wait another six months for another examination that will determine whether or not he is healthy enough to leave the sanatorium. Frustrated by these delays, which have impeded his military career, he complains that “time is passing [him] by” while he waits at the Berghof, “lounging about” and checking his temperature. Using a simile, he claims that he is “stagnating like an old water hole—a stinking pond.” There is a sense of situational irony to Joachim’s simile, which underscores his downbeat and depressed mood. Though he is at the Berghof in order to heal from tuberculosis, he instead feels that he is rotting there.
Related Themes:
Part 2, Chapter 1: The Baptismal Bowl/Grandfather in His Two Forms
Explanation and Analysis—The Portrait:
Hans is captivated by a portrait of his grandfather, which shows him in an old-fashioned military uniform. In a passage punctuated with situational irony, the narrator suggests that Hans regards the portrait of his grandfather as more “authentic and real” than the man himself:
Although he had only once seen his grandfather in real life in the fashion pictured there on canvas—just for a brief moment as part of a dignified procession into the town hall—he could not help, as we have said, regarding this pictorial presence as his authentic and real grandfather, seeing in the everyday one a temporary, imperfectly adapted improvisation, so to speak. From that perspective, the lapses and eccentricities in his everyday appearance were apparently mere imperfections, or inept adaptations, were the vestiges or hints
Hans’s grandfather is a conservative figure in local politics who has stuck to his old ways despite rapid cultural and political changes in Germany around the turn of the 20th century. Though Hans reveres his grandfather, the older man is fixated on the past and has little interest in changes in fashion or custom. Ironically, Hans thinks of the painting as being the “real grandfather,” and in turn, regards his grandfather in his “everyday” existence as a “temporary, imperfectly adapted improvisation” of the man he sees represented in the painting. His grandfather’s “eccentricities” appear, to Hans, as “mere imperfections” or “inept adaptations” of the man in the painting. The narrator’s language here is highly ironic, as the painting is itself merely a representation of the actual, then-living man. For Hans, however, there is something artificial or unreal about his grandfather, who does not seem to fit into his modern surroundings due to his refusal to compromise or adapt to the changing times.
Part 4, Chapter 10: The Thermometer
Explanation and Analysis—Recuperation :
In a passage marked by situational irony, Hans claims to Joachim that he will have to take a vacation to recover from the stresses of his vacation once he finally leaves the Berghof:
I feel as if once I’m back home in the flatlands I’m going to have to recuperate from my recuperation and sleep for three weeks, that’s how run-down I feel sometimes. And then to top it all there’s this catarrh I’ve caught.” Indeed, it did look more and more as if Hans Castorp would be returning to the flatlands with a first-class case of the sniffles. He had caught a cold, presumably from lying outside in the rest cure—
Initially, Hans visited Joachim in the sanatorium in order to take a brief and relaxing break before heading off to begin his apprenticeship as an engineer. Ironically, however, he claims that he will “have to recuperate from my recuperation and sleep for three weeks” once he gets back to “the flatlands,” as he feels exhausted by novelties of the Berghof and the efforts he has taken to acclimatize to this strange environment.
With further irony, Hans notes that he has “caught a cold” as a result of “lying outside in the rest cure,” though the cure is in fact designed to aid in the recovery of the ill. The heavily ironic tone of this scene suggests that the Berghof is not, despite its status as a medical institution, a place dedicated to healing. Though some patients are indeed gravely ill, others remain there unnecessarily, enjoying an extended break from the stresses and realities of their regular lives. Few, if any, characters leave the Berghof in an improved state of health.
Related Themes:
