Chapter summary
The opening chapter narrates the arrival of Hans Castorp in Davos, but the Purpose, written before any character enters the scene, already gives the key to the whole novel: the story seems old not because of the years that have passed, but because it takes place before the Great War, which separated two worlds. Next, the narrator uses his own journey to launch a thesis that will support the whole book: two days of travel are enough to unhook Hans from the world of home, of duties and of projects, because distance does what is usually attributed only to time, transforming him from within and making him forget, like the river Lethe. And Joachim Ziemssen, in the first dialogue, already speaks the language of the sanatorium like someone who no longer notices its strangeness.
Purpose
Section summary
Before any scene, the narrator says that he wants to tell Hans Castorp's story for the story's own sake, and that it should be related in the most remote past, because it unfolds before the Great War. He promises to narrate it with exactness and minuteness, and jokes about how much time that will take, which surely will not come to seven years.
Analysis
Still in the first paragraph, the narrator denies that the antiquity of a story depends on how much time has passed since it occurred. it is not properly to time that the story owes its degree of antiquity
The narrator takes from the reader, before any character, the measure the reader would use to judge the story, the calendar, and puts in its place the distance between two worlds. He does this because the story is going to run on a different regime of time, and whoever enters the book with a watch in hand, as Hans Castorp enters the sanatorium with his three weeks, will get lost.
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The Arrival
Section summary
Hans Castorp, a young man from Hamburg, travels alone to Davos-Platz, in the Swiss Alps, to spend three weeks with his cousin Joachim Ziemssen, who has been interned there for five months. After changing trains at Landquart, he boards a narrow-gauge train through gorges and tunnels. The narrator observes that two days of travel are enough to detach a young man from the world of home, because distance, as is said of time, transforms from within and makes one forget. Hans Castorp, who wanted to finish the visit quickly and return to the job waiting for him at a shipyard, feels lifted into a rarefied air and wonders whether it is imprudent to climb so suddenly.
At Davos-Dorf, Joachim calls to him from the platform, and the two address each other with "you" to avoid first names and effusions. In the car, Hans Castorp says they will return together in three weeks, and Joachim, tanned and with a tired look, replies that the doctor Dr. Behrens predicts another six months for him and that up there the ideas of someone from the plain are transformed: three weeks "are for them like a day." Hans Castorp is indignant. He finds the mountains unimpressive, and Joachim reminds him that the sanatorium is at 1,600 meters. When Joachim says that in winter the dead come down on sleds and that the assistant Dr. Krokowski practices the "psychic dissection" of patients, Hans Castorp bursts into uncontrollable laughter, Joachim laughs along, and the two reach the portal of the Berghof Sanatorium (see the Berghof).
Analysis
No. 34
Section summary
A liveried footman takes the cousins up in the elevator and along the white corridor to Hans Castorp's room, number thirty-four, between Joachim's and that of a Russian couple. Joachim tells him that an American woman died there the day before yesterday and that the room has been disinfected, and Hans Castorp, nervous, talks about formaldehyde, cigars and cold feet with a hot face. On their way down to dinner, he hears the cough of an Austrian aristocrat, which impresses him deeply.
Analysis
In the Restaurant
Section summary
The cousins dine in an almost empty room, where only one lady eats while reading and changes tables so as to turn her back on them. Hans Castorp eats and drinks a great deal; Joachim, sick of the kitchen, is happy to have someone to talk to, and says that here time "doesn't pass at all." He tells of the gaffes of a dining companion, Mrs. Stöhr, who says "disinsfect," calls the assistant "fomulus," and claims that Mrs. Iltis carries a "sterilizer" with her, and the two laugh until they hiccup. Then Joachim grows sad: the doctor speaks of another half year, and he, who had already been accepted into the Army, lives "like a rotting pool," with a thermometer in his mouth.
Hans Castorp, almost asleep, is led to the vestibule, where Joachim introduces him to Dr. Krokowski, a short, obese and very pale man. Krokowski asks whether he has come as a patient; on hearing that Hans Castorp is an engineer and in perfect health, he calls him "a phenomenon worth studying" and offers psychic assistance, which he refuses at once. In the room, Joachim warns that Krokowski is touchy and that he himself tells him a dream now and then only so that he has something to analyze. Hans Castorp lies down in the bed where someone died the day before yesterday and dreams all night of Joachim on a sled, of the Austrian aristocrat who coughs, and of Mrs. Iltis, whose "sterilizer" is nothing but a razor.
Analysis