A word, phrase or image that returns several times throughout the work, tied to a character or an idea, and gains meaning with each return.
In The Magic Mountain
this effect will be capable of going beyond the realm of soul and morality, and of affecting the very physical and organic part of the individual [...] For someone to set out to undertake a work that exceeds the measure of mere necessity, without his time having a satisfactory answer to the question "What for?", an isolation and moral readiness are indispensable, something rare and of a heroic nature, or else a very robust vitality
The question "What for?" appears here as the question of the whole age, and the novel carries it through the following chapters without giving a definitive answer. Each return ties the emptiness of meaning to Hans Castorp's body and choices.
Chapter II: The Baptismal Basin and the Two Figures of the Grandfather, the narrator
Afterwards, Hans Castorp dreamed that he found himself in the gymnasium yard [...] and that he was on the point of borrowing a pencil from Madame Chauchat, who was present as well.
Chapter III: The First Full Day and the Arrival of Settembrini, the narrator
I do not wish to grant death any power over my thoughts! For that is what goodness and philanthropy consist of, and nothing else. [...] Love confronts death; only love, and not reason, is stronger than it
What was the world that opened behind her, and that, according to Hans Castorp's inner presentiments, must be the world of forbidden love? It was death.
Chapter VII: Peeperkorn, the Great Boredom and the Thunder, the narrator
Will love still emerge from this worldwide festival of death, and from the pernicious fever that inflames the sky of the rainy night?
Chapter VII: Peeperkorn, the Great Boredom and the Thunder, the narrator
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