Yet the reader should also see that it was Mann's aim to show that ideals have a way of defying satisfactory realizations.Īccording to Mann himself, the novel is the sum total of his own experiences as told from his own - as Castorp - vantage point. That he cannot realize what he sees as a dream has perhaps justly been held against him. He finds it in the ideal of the balance between extremes and, eventually, in the affirmation of goodness. As it was, he had to try to find meaning outside the 'normal' world. any reasonably satisfying explanation of the meaning and purpose of man's life' had offered itself to him. Thus Castorp is perhaps a questing hero, who, according to the critic Herman Weigand, 'would never have overstepped so far the limits originally fixed for his stay if. The longer he keeps up his approach of non-commitment, the less capable he becomes of making a decision. Perhaps he prefers to deliberately change from one position to its opposite and on to their synthesis the more he does it, the more he realizes that this is what comprehending reality entails. The question arises whether he can, or even wants to, make decisions and take clear stands.

He remains hesitant, ambivalent in his feelings, and hampered by passivity. Throughout the novel, Castorp lets conflicting views act upon himself without committing himself to any one of them totally, not even to Settembrini's or even his own at the end of the snow dream. True reality, Mann sets out to show us, manifests itself in opposites and contradictions. Perhaps the greatest bit of irony in the novel is Mann's characterization of Castorp as 'simple.' All the characters around Castorp are 'simpler' in the sense that they are wholly committed to some cause or idea without experiencing the complexities of reality.

Mann thomas the magic mountain