This chapter is a flashback into Hans Castorp’s (and Thomas Mann’s) childhood and adolescence, using the approach employed in Buddenbrooks of trying to explain a man’s thoughts and actions in terms of those of his ancestors. More than all other chapters of the novel, this one brings to mind Mann’s […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 2

The first two sentences of the novel’s foreword deserve special attention, for they contain the hero’s characterization as “simple-minded.” As the story progresses, we become increasingly aware that Hans Castorp is by no means a “simple-minded” young man in the derogatory sense of the term. Mann merely mentions Castorp’s simplicity […]

Read more Summary and Analysis Chapter 1

The listing is complete except for a number of patients whose appearance is not significant enough to warrant separate mention. Albin A young man who, convinced of his hopeless condition, threatens to commit suicide publicly. Hofrat Behrens The head doctor of the sanatorium. Ellen Brand The young Danish girl, whose […]

Read more Character List

This novel, published in 1924 after twelve years of intermittent labor, is the story of the self-development of a “simple, young man.” Its hero is the hero of a bildungsroman. The characteristic of such a novel is that it focuses not so much on the hero himself but on the […]

Read more About The Magic Mountain