Previous
Part 4, Chapter 2
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Buddenbrooks, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Family and Sacrifice
Tradition, Modernity, and Change
The Protestant Ethic
Personal Fulfillment and Self-Knowledge
Pretense and Etiquette
Summary
Analysis
Consul Buddenbrook heads to the council meeting. On his way there, he encounters Gosch, the broker, who is also headed to the meeting. Though he looks rather “exotic,” Gosch is still among the town’s “bourgeois inhabitants” and shares their middle-class ideals. “What times we live in,” Gosch remarks, observing the protestors. The consul is amused—it almost sounds like Gosch is excited about the unrest. Gosch admits that while he knows “the masses are ignorant,” he can’t help but sympathize with them.
Gosch is more sympathetic to the revolutionaries’ calls for reform, though the tone of detached amusement he assumes as he remarks on the protestors suggests that he is comfortable sympathizing with them because he assumes their efforts will be handily quashed and doesn’t regard them as much of a threat.
Active
Themes
Gosch and Consul Buddenbrook reach the beer-and-dance hall and enter the cold, unadorned room where the council meeting is to be held. About 100 of the 120 council members have gathered. The others have presumably decided to stay home due to the ongoing unrest. One man informs the others that the last he heard, the masses are headed to the council meeting.
That so many of the consul’s fellow council members have opted to stay home underscores the severity of the threat the protestors pose. The revolution is gaining traction even as the ruling class tries to discount its power.
Active
Themes
The crowd reaches the building. The men listen to the angry crowd’s shouting for while, and then the chairman suggests they start the meeting. No one can really focus, though, so they instead sit around waiting—and worrying. Consul Buddenbrook sits near his father-in-law, Lebrecht Kröger, who is visibly scared and upset. Kröger wonders whether the “mob” is messing with his coachman, and Consul Buddenbrook decides to go outside and deal with the crowd. Gosch praises Buddenbrook’s courage and offers to accompany him.
Active
Themes
When Gosch and Consul Buddenbrook exit the building and look out on the street, they’re shocked at the size of the crowd—there are so many people. The crowd is made up of all kinds of ordinary people: dockworkers, sailors, school children. Upon seeing Consul Buddenbrook, some of the dockworkers—Buddenbrook’s employees—recognize him and remove their caps and fall silent so he can address them. The consul addresses one man, Corl Smolt, and demands that he explain the crowd’s intentions. Smolt explains that the workers aren’t happy with their quality of life, and they want change. Unmoved, the consul demands that Smolt and the others go home so that “public order” can be restored.
Active
Themes
Get the entire Buddenbrooks LitChart as a printable PDF.
"My students can't get enough of your charts and their results have gone through the roof." -Graham S.
Smolt declares that what the crowd really wants is “a republic, plain and simple.” When Consul Buddenbrook retorts that they already have a republic, Smolt responds, “then we want ’nother besides,” an inane answer that sends many in the crowd into fits of laughter. The conflict deescalated, Buddenbrook again tells everyone to go home, and this time they oblige. Buddenbrook commands Smolt to fetch Lebrecht Kröger’s carriage.
Active
Themes
