Symbols

The Berghof The sanatorium in Davos where almost the whole novel takes place, and the "magic mountain" of the title: the place above the plain where time stops running and whoever climbs up falls ill. Davos is a real place; the Berghof is the novel's invention and... The Thermometer The thermometer that the patients of the Berghof put in their mouths four times a day, seven minutes at a time. Hans Castorp buys his on the advice of the head nurse, Miss von Mylendonk, and the first reading is 37.6 degrees. The Maria Mancini Cigars Hans Castorp's favorite cigars, of which he brings two hundred in his suitcase on arrival. The brand is cheap, from Bremen (nineteen pfennig a cigar), and the habit of smoking is part of the customs of the young Hamburg bourgeois that Hans Castorp brings with... The X-Ray The fluoroscopy in Dr. Behrens's laboratory, in the section "My God, I See!" of Chapter V, in which Hans Castorp first sees Joachim's heart and then the skeleton of his own hand. The Snow The snowstorm in the section "Snow," in Chapter VI, in which Hans Castorp goes out on skis against the rules, gets lost, falls asleep standing beside a shed, and dreams. Back in Chapter IV, an off-season snowfall had forced him to buy blankets. The Clock The clock and the calendar, the measure of time "down below." In Chapter III Joachim Ziemssen answers Hans Castorp's philosophy of time with them; in Chapter VII, seven years after his arrival, Hans Castorp no longer has a working clock or calendar. The Pencil The pencil that Hans Castorp borrowed at thirteen from Pribislav Hippe, a schoolmate with slanted eyes, and which returns twice in the novel: in a dream on the second night at the Berghof and on Walpurgis Night, requested from Clavdia Chauchat. The Number Seven The number that measures Hans Castorp's stay at the Berghof: seven years, seven tables in the dining room, seven minutes of thermometer, seven chapters. The narrator does not hide it, and in the last chapter he comments on the number itself.