The narrator interrupts the story to comment, judge, give an opinion, or speak directly to the reader.
In The Magic Mountain
Two days of travel separate a man [...] from his everyday world, from all that he is accustomed to call his duties, interests, cares and projects; they separate him much more than this young man could imagine while a cab carried him to the station. The space that, whirling and fleeing, creeps between him and his place of origin reveals forces that are usually thought to be the privilege of time
Instead of following the young man on the train, the narrator interrupts the scene and speaks on his own: "Two days of travel separate a man" from his world. The general observation reveals what Hans Castorp does not yet perceive.
Chapter I: The Arrival at the Berghof, the narrator
Man does not live only his personal life as an individual; consciously or unconsciously, he also takes part in the life of his age and of his contemporaries
Chapter II: The Baptismal Basin and the Two Figures of the Grandfather, the narrator
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
Chapter II: The Baptismal Basin and the Two Figures of the Grandfather, the narrator
A rich and interesting content is [...] capable of shortening the hour and even the day [...] so that years rich in events pass far more slowly than those others, poor, empty, light, swept away by the wind and flown off. What is called boredom is, therefore, in reality, rather a morbid brevity of time, caused by monotony
Chapter IV: The Sense of Time, Hippe and the Thermometer, the narrator
It is the same day repeating over and over; yet, precisely because it is always the same day, the term "repetition" seems at bottom rather inappropriate; it would be better to speak of monotony, of a now that has stopped, or of eternity. They bring you soup at lunchtime, just as they brought it yesterday and will bring it tomorrow. [...] the times run together, mingle in your mind, and what reveals itself to you as the true form of existence is a present without extension, in which they bring you soup eternally.
Chapter V: Humaniora, the Analysis and Walpurgis Night, the narrator
Can one narrate time itself, time as such, in and of itself? No, indeed not, such a thing would be an insane audacity!
Chapter VII: Peeperkorn, the Great Boredom and the Thunder, the narrator
the thunder we all know of rumbled, that deafening detonation of the sinister mixture of boredom and irritation long accumulated [...] and the thunder that, for us, however, makes the magic mountain explode and casts our sleeper, none too gently, before its gates.
Chapter VII: Peeperkorn, the Great Boredom and the Thunder, the narrator
Subscription
The explanation of each passage, in every device and in every work, comes with a subscription.