Death

The Theme in the Work

Hans Castorp meets death before he meets the mountain. In Chapter II, between the ages of five and seven, he loses his mother and father, and shortly after, his grandfather, Senator Hans Lorenz Castorp. At the wake, the grandfather appears dressed in the Spanish ruff of his portrait, and the boy recognizes there his true form. From the third burial the narrator draws two aspects of death, one pious and solemn, the other physical and material.

In Chapter V death stops being a memory and becomes a vision. At the X-ray, Hans Castorp looks at his own hand and understands for the first time that he is destined to die. Dr. Behrens tells him that living is dying, Lodovico Settembrini teaches that death is the complement and condition of life, and, after seeing the body of the Austrian aristocrat, Hans Castorp begins to visit the dying of the house. On Walpurgis Night he tells Clavdia Chauchat, in French, that the body, love, and death are one thing.

In Chapter VI Settembrini warns that death, isolated as a principle, redeems through evil, and that the thoughts of Leo Naphta are under its protection; in the Snow, Hans Castorp decides not to grant it any power over his thoughts. At the end of the chapter Joachim Ziemssen dies, in the middle of a sentence about his leave. Chapter VII piles up deaths: that of Pieter Peeperkorn, who poisons himself; that of Naphta, who shoots himself in the head after Settembrini fires into the air; the appearance of Joachim at a session of Dr. Krokowski; and the war, which the narrator calls the world festival of death.

The novel treats death in the two registers that Chapter II separates, the solemn and the physical, and never lets one erase the other: the grandfather's wake has the ruff of the portrait and has the waxen dummy that death set in his place; Joachim's death has Behrens's sentence about honor and has the camphor injection. What changes is Hans Castorp's position before it: the boy who grows used to it, the young man who sees his own skeleton, the man who in the snow wants to deny it power over his thoughts and forgets the decision the same night.

Where It Appears

• Chapter II, The Baptismal Font and the Two Figures of the Grandfather: At the grandfather's wake, the third death the little Hans Castorp witnesses in a short time, the narrator distinguishes in death a pious and solemn aspect and another that is physical and material.
• Chapter III, A Bad Joke. Viaticum. Laughter Interrupted: Joachim tells him he saw the viaticum being brought to little Hujus, who was screaming hidden under the blankets, and Hans Castorp says that a dying man is nobler than someone who strolls about and laughs.
• Chapter IV, Hans Castorp Attempts a Conversation in French: In the corridor, Hans Castorp glimpses a young man with a thin beard, the first dying man he has seen in his life, since his parents and grandfather died, so to speak, behind his back.
• Chapter V, "My God, I See!": Looking at his own hand on the fluoroscope screen, Hans Castorp understands, for the first time in his life, that he is destined to die.
• Chapter V, Humaniora: When Hans Castorp asks what the body is, Dr. Behrens answers that it is water and protein and that living is a combustion in which form is preserved, so that at that point living is dying.
• Chapter V, Danse Macabre: After the Austrian aristocrat dies and Hans Castorp goes with Joachim to see the body, he starts looking for and visiting the seriously ill of the house.
• Chapter V, Walpurgis Night: Kneeling before Clavdia on Walpurgis Night, Hans Castorp declares in French that the body, love, and death are not three things but one.
• Chapter VI, Of the City of God and Redemption Through Evil: Settembrini warns the cousins against Naphta, saying that death dissolves and redeems, but through evil and not from evil, and that it sets free toward sensuality.
• Chapter VI, Snow: In the dream of the snow, in which he sees a gulf of beautiful young men and two witches who devour a child, Hans Castorp says he does not wish to grant death any power over his thoughts.
• Chapter VI, Like a Soldier, Like a Hero: Joachim dies at seven in the evening in the middle of a sentence asking for an extension of his leave, and Dr. Behrens says that he has slipped away to the field of honor.
• Chapter VII, Mynheer Peeperkorn (end): On the morning after the excursion to the waterfall, Hans Castorp is called to Peeperkorn's room, where he has killed himself by injecting poison with an instrument that imitates a cobra's fangs.
• Chapter VII, Very Questionable Things: At a session of Dr. Krokowski, with Valentin's Prayer playing in the background, Joachim's figure appears, and Hans Castorp asks forgiveness, turns on the light, and takes the key of the room.
• Chapter VII, The Great Irritation: At the duel in the snow, Settembrini fires into the air, and Naphta, after calling him a coward, discharges the pistol into his own head.
• Chapter VII, The Thunder: With Hans Castorp advancing through the mud of the battlefield, the narrator asks whether from this world festival of death love will still arise.

Passages

From the third burial, the narrator takes the double face of death.

Before the screen, Hans Castorp sees his own grave.

Joachim dies without knowing he is dying, busy with his leave.

Behind Schubert's song, the narrator names the world of forbidden love.