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Part 7, Chapter 1
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
On the evening of young Hanno’s christening, Christian Buddenbrook enters the sitting room, where Thomas and Gerda are reading together, and tells Thomas he must speak with him about an urgent matter. Thomas has a bad feeling. He gave Christian a loan earlier this year—what can Christian want now? Now, Christian describes his various physical ailments—a constant ache, a fear that he will become paralyzed, his trouble sleeping. But it’s not his health that troubles Christian the most—it’s the state of his business. He confesses that he never got out of trouble after Thomas loaned him money last year. Since then, he’s lost more money investing in coffee.
As Thomas feared, Christian has come to him to him yet again with money problems. Christian insists he’s more concerned about his business woes than his physical ailments, but both are symptoms of the same underlying cause: his decadent lifestyle and his general aimlessness. His inherited wealth gives him security, but that security leaves him unmotivated and without purpose.
Active
Themes
Thomas has had enough. He tells Christian that he knows all about Christian’s cavorting with his “trashy women.” Christian doesn’t deny any of this—then he confesses that Aline’s third child, a girl, is his. Christian defends Aline against Thomas’s insults, describing her as a “splendid creature” who is very “healthy” and has the finest teeth Christian has ever seen. He begins to tell a story about the night he first met her, in an oyster bar—but then he trails off, noting that Thomas doesn’t like to hear “about such things.” And it doesn’t matter anyway, since everything is over with Aline: Christian plans to pay off his debt in Hamburg and then move back to London, where he’ll resume his former position in the family business.
Christian tries to defend himself and his relationship with Aline against Thomas’s scathing criticism, but he only makes things worse for himself. The flailing quality to his speech strikes a comedic tone. He mentions the child he and Aline have together—scandalously, outside of marriage. The detail of the couple having met at an oyster bar has a similarly scandalous undertone, given the decadence of raw oysters and their reputation as an aphrodisiac. Worse still, Christian inadvertently gives credence to Thomas’s poor opinion of him with his casual, unbothered confession that he plans to abandon his lover and the child he has supposedly fathered with her. If Christian thinks any of what he has just said will make Thomas more sympathetic to him, he is undoubtedly mistaken.
Active
Themes
Thomas tells Christian he can do whatever he wants. Then without a second glance at Christian, he leaves the dining room and returns to Gerda, who is still reading. Christian follows Thomas. He bids farewell to Gerda and laments “the way a man gets tossed about in life.” Still, there’s so much adventure to experience in life. He wonders if Thomas knows the feeling.
Active
Themes
