Who He Is
Hans Castorp's cousin, an army officer interned at the Berghof, who already speaks the sanatorium's language when his cousin arrives and who wants only to return to his regiment.
Joachim responds by putting the same measure into relative terms, and it is here that the sanatorium's vocabulary enters the conversation for the first time.Three weeks represent almost nothing for us up here, but for you, who come on a visit and intend to stay only three weeks, it is a considerable amount of time. [...] "Returning from here in three weeks" is an idea from down there.
Trajectory
It is he who says, at the first dinner, the driest sentence in the novel about the place.
Quickly or slowly, as you please [...] It does not pass at all, you know? Here there is no time and no life; there is simply nothing at all
The phrase anticipates, in the mouth of a bored military man, all that the Excursus of Chapter IV will develop as theory, and it is the one most often quoted when the novel is summarized. It is worth remembering that it is said on the first day, before any doctrine, and by someone who only wants to leave.
He measures his fever with the thermometer (see the thermometer) four times a day, seven minutes each time, and it is his heart that Hans Castorp sees first in the fluoroscopy (see the X-ray).
In the fluoroscopy laboratory (see the X-ray), Behrens first shows Hans Castorp the cousin's own skeleton, which he examines in the dim light through the luminous screen.Good heavens, it was the heart. Hans Castorp was seeing Joachim's honorable heart. "I am seeing your heart!" he said in a strangled voice.
Tired of the doctors' schedule, he advances his departure against their advice and, on boarding, calls his cousin by his first name for the first time.
Hans [...], come on, you too!
He returns sick, gets worse without hiding it, and dies at the Berghof giving one last domestic order, and Dr. Behrens sums up his death in military language.
At the moment of death, Joachim, without knowing he is dying, gives one last domestic order:
the patient mentioned with some haste that he must immediately draft and send a petition requesting an extension of his leave. In the middle of these words the "imperceptible passing" took place.
He slipped off to the field of honor, that runaway. But in his case honor meant death, and death... Well, you may reverse the sentence as you like. Either way, he told us: "I have the honor of taking my leave".
He reappears in Chapter VII, at Elly Brand's session, with the warrior's beard of his last days.
The apparition is described with the same material care that the narrator gives to the most concrete scenes of the novel:
it was Joachim. It was Joachim, with the shadows of his hollow cheeks and with the warrior's beard of his last days [...] Despite the shelter of his head, which obscured his features, the stamp of suffering could again be distinguished on his face.
Themes Embodied
The standard themes that pass through him are Duty, Death, and Honor and Reputation.
Joachim comes down from the Berghof out of conviction and by his own choice: he goes to serve and returns to die. Hans Castorp only comes down seven years later, and not by choice, but because of the thunder. The irony is stated by Settembrini at the farewell: the cousin who wanted to be a soldier dies in the sanatorium, and it is the civilian who goes to war ("it fell to you, and not to our lieutenant").
Relationships
- Hans Castorp: the cousin, whom he calls by his first name only at the farewell.
- Dr. Behrens: the doctor whose schedule he refuses and who names his death.
- Lodovico Settembrini and Leo Naphta: they argue over his body at the wake.