The Magic Mountain

In a flashback, we learn that Hans was orphaned when he was still a child. His mother and father died within months of each other; the mother of phlebitis, the father of pneumonia. He was taken in by his grandfather, the senator Hans Lorenz Castorp. The grandfather’s influence “was imprinted much more deeply, clearly and significantly in his memory than that of his parents” (22). Hans particularly notes his grandfather’s meticulous manner, and the implements in his house connecting him to past generations of family, such as a baptismal bowl first dated to 1650. When the grandfather dies, Hans notices with pleasure that the body is arranged in the casket in a way that reminds him of a favorite portrait.

Later, Hans is taken in by his great-uncle, the wealthy Consul Tienappel. His new guardian advises young Hans to take up a career, as his inheritance is quite small and will not include anything from Consul, who has two sons. Hans has an aptitude for painting ships but dismisses the idea of suffering as an artist. With no remarkable passion, Hans Castorp begins his studies as a naval engineer.

The narrator notes that Hans is “neither a genius or an idiot,” continuing:

if we refrain from applying the word ‘mediocre’ to him, we do so for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with his intelligence and little or nothing to do with his prosaic personality. (30)

In other words, Hans is a product of his time. The people around him seem to naturally trust him, and his demeanor is cheerful.

Hans wakes from his first night of troubled sleep at the sanatorium. His mood takes a bad turn as he realizes he can hear the Russian couple in the room next door and their “giggles, grasps, grapplings” (37). He thinks: “The real scandal is that the walls are so thin and that you can hear everything so clearly, and that’s simply intolerable!” (38).

A woman wanders through the sanatorium. She has become known as Tous-les-deux which is French for “both.” Hans learns that seating arrangements at the sanitarium are culturally significant. There is a table for “bad Russians” and a table for the well-mannered “good Russians.” Hans and Joachim are seated next to Frau Stöhr, who is prone to malapropisms (for instance, she says “Eighty Camp” instead of “aide de camp”). He meets Director Behrens for the first time who says, “I can tell right off whether someone will make a competent patient or not, because that takes talent” (44).

Hans has trouble getting used to the mountain climate and finds the taste of his favorite tobacco has soured. He meets the “The Half-Lung Club” and discovers that one of their pranks is to produce a whistle from a hole in their chest, called a pneumothorax. Joachim relates a horrific story about a Catholic girl he witnessed who screamed and kicked as she was read her last rites by a priest.

The two young men meet Ludovico Settembrini on the path; he flatters them while heaping scorn on others. He discusses his literary patron, the “great poet and freethinker” Carducci, Satanic worship, his hatred of tobacco, and Director Behren’s weakness for it. He declares, “Malice, sir, is the spirit of criticism, and criticism marks the origin of progress and enlightenment” (59). 

With a studied mastery, Joachim settles in to the first of his day’s “rest cures” on the balcony adjoining his room. Hans thinks about the intangibility of time and later orders a beer but finds it too strong and unsatisfying. He meets a young girl named Marusya and notices that Joachim’s mood becomes noticeably serious in her presence. Again, he is annoyed by a door slamming behind him.

The two cousins walk to the nearby village of Dorf and return to their rooms for another rest cure. Afterward, a meal is served. Hans becomes both dreamier and more irritable. He is again irritated to hear the glass door slam behind him and turns to see a young married Russian woman named Madame Chauchat. He closely studies her and pays special attention to her hands.

After dinner, Hans tells Joachim that “it seems to me I’ve been up here with you all for a long, long time” (80). Supper follows teatime in the dining room; both are large meals. Hans has another beer and feels worse. As night falls, Hans and Settembrini talk again. The older man describes the use of a “silent sister,” a thermometer without a printed scale. That night, disturbed by bad dreams, Hans has “a brilliant insight into what time actually is—nothing less than a silent sister, a column of mercury without a scale, for the purposes of keeping people from cheating” (89).

After two days of warm August weather, it snows. Joachim explains that at such high altitudes, the seasons behave strangely. “They get all mixed up, so to speak, and pay no attention to the calendar,” he says (92). Hans expresses his theory about the inherent nobility of those suffering from illness, and Settembrini counters, saying: “Illness is definitely not elegant, and certainly not venerable…I can best arouse your abhorrence of that idea by telling you it is outdated and ugly” (96).

Hans grows restless. He makes several acquaintances, including “Tous-les-deux.” There are small concerts, carriage rides, and lectures, and another lecture from Settembrini. Hans swoons after a too-strenuous walk and remembers a schoolmate named Pribislav Hippe: “His heart became accustomed to this mute, distant relationship with Pribislav Hippe, and he considered it a fundamental, permanent fixture in his life” (119). He remembers borrowing a pencil from Hippe and keeping a couple of shavings from the pencil. Near the end of this reverie, he makes a connection between his observations of Hippe and Madame Chauchat in the sanatorium. 

Hans marks a week at the sanatorium and pays his bill. He finds the rates reasonable. He learns that Director Behrens lost his wife at the sanitarium a decade ago, went into a strange melancholy, and has not left since. 

Hans’s obsession with Madame Chauchat grows over the next two weeks. He strikes up a conversation with a woman at his table who shares her opinion that Chauchat, like all Russian women, are far too “free and liberal” (135). He learns Madame Chauchat’s first name: Clavdia. Her indifference to him fills him with a subtle hope and also “an eerie, even threatening sense of helplessness” (144). 

Settembrini regales Hans with his family history and establishes his own long-standing support of liberal democracy. Hans, anxious that his stay in the sanatorium will soon come to an end, comes down with a fever and purchases a fancy thermometer for himself from the sanatorium’s nurse. Behrens insists that Hans stay on as a patient. Suddenly, Hans is treated with a new warmth by the sanatorium’s residents, and he even gets a subtle and distant smile from Clavdia Chauchat.