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Dramatic Irony
Key Examples in The Magic Mountain
Part 6, Chapter 6: Operationes Spirituales
Explanation and Analysis—Mental Health:
While debating with Naphta about the nature of mental illness, Settembrini makes the paradoxical claim that any person horrified by their own hallucinations is actually quite healthy. Posing a hypothetical, in which one of their companions is terrified by a hallucination of their dead father sitting in the corner of their room, Settembrini claims that:
The joke was that this could not happen to any one of these gentlemen, because their minds were healthy. And if it ever should occur, then they would not be healthy, but sick, and instead of reacting like a healthy person [...] they would think it quite normal, join in the conversation, the way people who hallucinate did. The belief that one would be healthy enough to regard one’s hallucination as a horror—that was the failure of imagination of which healthy people were guilty.
Related Themes:
