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Foreshadowing
Part 1, Chapter 1: Arrival
Explanation and Analysis:
The Magic Mountain is a bildungsroman, or a “coming of age” story. It follows Hans Castorp, a young man from Hamburg, Germany, whose plans to find employment as an engineer are derailed during a trip to see his cousin, Joachim Ziemssen, who is being treated for tuberculosis in a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. At the beginning of the novel, Mann emphasizes Hans’s youthful immaturity:
He had not planned to take this trip particularly seriously, to become deeply involved in it. His intention had been, rather, to put it behind him quickly, simply because that was how things had to be, to return quite the same person he had been at departure, and to pick up his life again where he had been forced to leave it lying for the moment. Only yesterday he had been totally caught up in his normal train of thought, preoccupied with what had just occurred, his exams, and with what was about to occur, his joining the firm of Tunder and Wilms [...]
Related Themes:
