The Magician

“Thomas lived in a world of his dreams more than his brother Heinrich did, or his mother, or his sisters. Even his discussions with his father about warehouses were further aspects of a fantasy world that often included himself as a Greek god, or as a figure in a story from a nursery rhyme, or the woman in the oil painting that his father had placed on the stairwell, the expression on her face ardent, anxious, expectant.”

The close third-person perspective conveys Thomas’s lively, complex inner life. To many, Thomas seems like a practical child, but he’s a daydreamer for whom fantasy and reality are a continuum. In addition, this passage reflects Thomas’s gift for keeping his inner life secret and private, a gift that informs and powers his writing.

“No matter where they went in the world, the Manns of Lübeck would never be known as they had been known when the senator was alive.”

Thomas’s realization, filled with a sense of loss, thematically illustrates finding one’s Identity Amid Displacement. He has lost not only Lübeck but also status, identity, and community. Even though he’s still a teen, he understands the depth of loss, of knowing that time can never be reversed.

“When Thomas wrote a poem about wanting to rest his head on his lover’s breast, or walk with his lover in the deepening twilight to a place of beauty where they would be fully alone, when he spoke of the urge he felt to intertwine with the soul of his loved one, the figure he imagined, the object of his desire, was Armin Martens.”

This poetic passage describes Thomas’s amorous awakening and his realization of his sexuality. The novel describes Thomas’s yearning for the loved one in romantic language rather than that of physical lust, evoking Thomas’s youthfulness and idealism.