Discussion Questions

The narrator states that "it is not properly to time that the story owes its degree of antiquity" and, in the same passage, promises to tell it "with exactness and minuteness." What, then, does the antiquity of a story depend on, and why does he tie this idea to the promise of telling everything in such detail?

During the journey, the narrator says that space reveals "forces that are usually thought to be the privilege of time." Why is distance, and not duration, what first separates Hans Castorp from Hamburg, and what does this suggest about the "three weeks" he plans to stay?

On receiving the room where an American woman died the day before yesterday, Hans Castorp says "They've disinfected it, so everything's fine" and begins to talk about microbes. What does this diversion show about the way he deals with death, and what does it already reveal about the kind of visitor he is?

At the first dinner, Joachim says that time "doesn't pass at all" and that "Here there is no time and no life." Why does the novel put this phrase in Joachim's mouth, before any doctrine, and what does it gain or lose by being said as a complaint rather than as a theory?

For the boy Hans Castorp, the image of the grandfather in everyday life "was not the genuine and true one," and the figure he recognizes as authentic is confirmed at the wake. What does it mean that death reveals the true form of someone, and is it a consolation or a strangeness?

The narrator says that, when his time cannot answer the question "What for?", the individual needs a rare "isolation and moral readiness" or a very robust vitality, and that Hans Castorp has neither. To what extent does this diagnosis explain the young man, and to what extent is it an excuse the narrator offers him?

Listening to the couple in the next room, Hans Castorp sets his face, and the narrator offers several names for this reaction, from "purity of soul" to "tartuffery," without choosing any. Why does the narrator refuse to decide, and what does Hans Castorp's gesture hide or confess?

The slamming of a door provokes in Hans Castorp "a mortal hatred for this noise," and the narrator suggests this may be due to upbringing or to an innate idiosyncrasy. Why does such a small noise generate such disproportionate fury, and what should the reader conclude from the text offering only hypotheses?

Joachim says that illness and death, up there, are "a kind of relaxation," and shortly after, Hans Castorp claims that a dying man is nobler than someone who "strolls and laughs." Do these two statements contradict each other, or do they describe the same thing seen from opposite sides?

Settembrini calls the patients "fallen folk" and the doctors "Minos and Rhadamanthus," and soon after he recites a hymn to Satan. What kind of humanism is this, that despises illness and claims the devil, and what can a young man like Hans Castorp take from it?

On the balcony, Hans Castorp says that we measure time by space and that our measures "are nothing but conventions." Is he philosophizing or rationalizing what the place and his body are already doing to him, and does the text indicate one or the other?

Hans Castorp says he feels his heart beat "on its own," as if the body had "disconnected itself from the soul," and Joachim reproves the way he speaks. What is at stake in the separation between body and soul that Hans describes, and why does Joachim receive it with censure?

On seeing who slams the glass door, Hans Castorp thinks "A female, of course!", like someone confirming a suspicion. What did he expect to find, and why does his irritation at the noise already carry, along with it, a curiosity about the woman who causes it?

Mr. Albin shows a revolver to the ladies and says it is an "incurable" case and, for that reason, "I no longer figure in the accounts; I can laugh at everything." Hans Castorp imagines the "advantages of shame" and is frightened by the sensation of "dissolute pleasure" it gives him. What fascinates him about the idea of living without the pressure of honor, and why does it frighten him?

Settembrini advises Hans Castorp to pack his bags that very night and take the next day's train, and he refuses because he would be ashamed of himself and would judge himself a "coward." Is the advice prudence, a test, or a pedagogue's provocation, and is the refusal a choice of Hans's or already something else?

Hans Castorp buys two wool blankets but refuses the fur sleeping bag because he would have the impression of "settling in" there and becoming "one of you." What separates the blanket from the fur bag for him, and what does this limit reveal about how much he already belongs to the place?

The narrator says that boredom is, "in reality, rather a morbid brevity of time, brought about by monotony," and that years full of events pass more slowly than empty ones. How can empty time seem short and full time seem long, and what does this inversion change in the common idea that boredom is time that is slow to pass?

After the encounter with the Mexican mother of the two dying sons, Hans Castorp tells Joachim that when "death enters into play" he has "the sensation of being in my element." Is it an affinity with death, the orphanhood he himself invokes as explanation, or the comfort of someone who has not yet seen anyone die up close?

Settembrini says that music is "politically suspect" and, in the same speech, that it "awakens time." These two ideas can be reconciled, and what does the humanist fear in an art that can both awaken and lull?

On a bench, Hans Castorp recalls the schoolmate who lent him a pencil when he was thirteen and thinks: "How much he looks like her, that woman up here! Is that why I am so drawn to her?" What does the memory suggest about the origin of what he feels, and does the question he asks himself already contain an answer?

Krokowski claims that repressed love returns in disguise and that "every illness is only love transformed." What does this thesis offer to someone who hears it in a sanatorium, and what in it is convincing and what is dangerous?

Apropos of Behrens, the narrator calls the "sick doctor" a "paradox" and asks: "Can one who is oppressed liberate?" What is gained and what is lost when the one who treats shares the illness of the one being treated?

Hans Castorp begins to await each meal as a meeting with Madame Chauchat, and the narrator says that one could no longer say the heart "beat for nothing." If the body now has a motive, what has changed: has Hans come to feel more, or to understand better what he had already felt since the first day?

Settembrini tells how the Carbonaro grandfather went about in black through the oppressed homeland, and Hans Castorp compares him with his own grandfather, also in black, but for the opposite reason: "two worlds, two cardinal points." What does the narrator show by setting the two grandfathers side by side, and what does Hans inherit from each?

Behrens tells Hans Castorp that the mountain air is "good against the illness" and, at the same time, "good for the illness." Is this ambiguity a medical argument, a trap, or an honest description, and what would it change about what the "three weeks" of the visit could have been?

In bed, the narrator says, the patient lives "the same day that repeats itself," but "repetition" seems to him an improper term, and he speaks of "a now that has stopped." What is the difference between repetition and this stopped now, and why does the narrator address "you" to describe it?

On looking at his own hand in the fluoroscopy, Hans Castorp "understood that he was destined to die," although he had already lost his mother, his father and his grandfather in childhood. Why did it take an apparatus for him to understand what he already knew, and what changes between seeing through science and seeing as the Tienappel relative did, who saw the dying as skeletons?

Settembrini measures analysis by whether it liberates or hinders action, and the narrator says that Hans's third letter home "consolidated the freedom of Hans Castorp," not by the concepts of the plains but by those "of up here." What sense of freedom does the humanist defend, what sense does the narrator attribute to Hans, and what lies between the two?

After Clavdia's look of disdain at the yellow shoes, Joachim speaks of the cousin's "drop in temperature," which ends with the greeting exchanged with her. Why does the book describe a state of mind in the language of fever, and what does this suggest about what the sanatorium calls illness?

Settembrini explains to Hans Castorp the plan of an encyclopedia that will classify all human ills, because "the most dangerous enemy is the unknown enemy." Does classifying a suffering mean beginning to defeat it, or is it a way of keeping one's distance from it?

Asked "What is the body?", Behrens answers that life is combustion and that "living is dying." Is this answer a materialist reduction, the provocation of a cynical doctor, or something else, and why does Hans Castorp keep insisting on asking?

Reading anatomy on winter nights, Hans Castorp comes to think of life as "a fever of matter" and of illness as "the licentious form of life." Is this reasoning a discovery, or the delirium of someone who reads his own illness into every book?

Hans Castorp begins visiting the dying of the house, and he tells Settembrini that he looks after the grave cases, those who are "dying," while the Italian accuses him of seeking to justify himself "through good works." Is this gesture compassion, curiosity about death, or flight from his own illness, and is Settembrini's irony justified?

Hans Castorp declares his love in French because, he says, speaking French is "parler sans parler," "sans responsabilité." A declaration made outside one's own language still counts as a declaration, so what does he gain, and what does he risk, by saying what he feels in this way?

Settembrini asks Hans Castorp whether he liked the pomegranate, and Hans, not understanding, answers that no pomegranates were served to them. Settembrini replies that whoever "has eaten of the fruits of that realm belongs to them forever." What does the image say about the place where Hans is, and why does he feel "pierced through" without being able to explain why?

Naphta states: "To see the world divided into two opposing camps: that is spirit. All monism is tedious." Hans Castorp, on the way home, tells Joachim that one should not "divide the world." Who is right, and why does Hans resist choosing precisely when he has just met someone who chooses with such clarity?

Naphta says that, for the kingdom to come, it is necessary to "suspend momentarily the dualism between good and evil," and he calls this the "necessity of terror." What makes this argument coherent from within, and does Settembrini's response, which invokes "personality, the rights of man, liberty," succeed or fail in refuting it?

At the station, Joachim says to his cousin: "Come along soon, you too!" What does this appeal show about what Joachim sees in Hans Castorp, and why does it weigh so much coming from someone who is leaving, when Hans has already decided to stay?

Uncle James, sent by the plain to take Hans Castorp back, sees a picture showing the skeleton of a female torso and asks what it is, and Hans answers: "That? It's a keepsake." What does this answer show about what holds Hans to the mountain, and why does the consul have no way to contest it?

Naphta says that "the sicker one is, the more human one is," and the text has already told us that illness made him leave the path to the priesthood. Does this make his thesis more honest or more suspect, and what does it answer to Settembrini's refusal to see nobility in illness?

In the snow dream, Hans Castorp says that love confronts death and that "only love, and not reason, is stronger than it," and he calls Naphta and Settembrini "charlatans." What does this sentence accept and refuse from each of them, and why is it born of a dream and not of a conversation?

Joachim dies asking for "an extension of his leave," and Behrens dismisses him in the military language of the "field of honor." Why does the novel let the soldier die with a petition on his lips, and what does the dispute between Naphta and Settembrini over the body reveal about the value of each one's theses?

The narrator asks whether one can "narrate time itself," answers no, and then spends pages doing something very close to it. How does a novel deal with time without narrating it, and what does it mean to say that "time drowns in the immense monotony of space"?

The narrator says that, at Peeperkorn's first speech, no one resented that he "lacked entirely any content." Why does a man whose speech has no content dominate any gathering, and what does this reveal about what people seek when they listen to someone?

Drunk, Peeperkorn declares that "the defeat of feeling in the face of life" is pettiness that deserves no forgiveness. Why does this sentence, said under these conditions, sound like doctrine, and why does Hans Castorp refuse the kiss on Clavdia's forehead that the Dutchman orders him to give?

Hans Castorp explains to Settembrini that Peeperkorn is worth a "personality," a value "Positive to the highest degree," although his speech has no content. What does a value mean that cannot be summed up in an idea, and why does this presence silence Naphta and Settembrini without refuting either of them?

Before the waterfall, Peeperkorn gives a speech that no one hears, and the next morning he kills himself. Hans Castorp explains the gesture by saying that the failure of feeling gave him "the sensation of a cosmic catastrophe." Does this explanation honor Peeperkorn or diminish him, and what does the gesture show about the doctrine of feeling that he preached?

After Clavdia's departure and Peeperkorn's death, the narrator gives the name "boredom" to the demon that dominates Hans Castorp, and he speaks of "dead life." How does this boredom differ from what Joachim and the narrator himself had described about time at the Berghof, and why does it arrive precisely after a departure and a death?

Hans Castorp listens to Schubert's "The Linden Tree," and the narrator asks what world opens up behind the song, that of "forbidden love," and answers: "It was death." Why does the novel find danger in a song Hans Castorp loves so much, and what does it mean to love something that is "a fruit of life, begotten by death"?

At the occult session to summon Joachim, Hans Castorp sees the figure of his cousin, murmurs "Forgive me!", turns on the light, and takes the room key from Krokowski. Why does he interrupt precisely when he achieves what he came for, and what difference does the novel draw between curiosity and grief?

Settembrini promises Hans Castorp that "I will not kill," fires into the air during the duel, and Naphta calls him "Coward!" before killing himself. Firing into the air is an act of courage or of renunciation. Why does Naphta not accept that the duel should end this way?

The novel ends with a question, "will love still arise?", without saying whether Hans Castorp survives, after Settembrini dismisses him with "in giù finalmente." Why does the narrator end by asking, and what does Settembrini's farewell, which sends him to fight "among his own," already answer or leave unanswered?

The Purpose warns that the story will be told "with exactness and thoroughness," and Hans Castorp's three weeks become seven years. Is the novel's slowness a flaw of rhythm, or the means by which the book makes the reader live what it describes?

Hans Castorp comes up as a visitor, with no declared illness, and it is Behrens's diagnosis that keeps him. Does he stay because he is ill, because he wants to stay, or because an era without an answer to the question "What for?" leaves him without reason to leave?

Settembrini and Naphta argue for years without either one winning, and Hans Castorp calls the two of them "charlatans" in a dream. Does the novel take sides, or does it teach how to read without taking sides? What kind of reader does it intend to form?

Hans Castorp declares in the snow that love is stronger than death, and soon forgets what he thought. Why give the character the central sentence and then take it from him, and what is left for the reader?

Illness "is absolutely not noble" for Settembrini, it is what is most human for Naphta, it is "love transformed" for Krokowski, and "the licentious form of life" for Hans Castorp. What does the novel seem to think of illness, or does it refuse to have a single answer?

Over the course of the novel, Hans Castorp lives with the deaths of his grandfather, Joachim, Peeperkorn, and Naphta, and each is told in a different way. What does he learn from them, if he learns anything, and what does the book leave for the reader to learn?

Hans Castorp declares his love in French to a woman who reminds him of a schoolmate, and to whom he asks for a pencil. In what sense does the novel treat love as both memory and disguise, and does this make it any less true?

Near the end, the narrator says the thunder "makes the magic mountain explode." What does the mountain enchant in Hans Castorp, time, illness, or the lack of an answer, and does the spell break for reasons he comes to understand?