The Magic Mountain: Similes 8 key examples

The narrator uses a simile that compares the Berghof, a sanatorium located in the Swiss Alps, to a sponge: 

They had first taken a street that was faced by an irregular pattern of buildings and ran along the railroad tracks, following the valley’s axis, but then turned left and crossed the narrow tracks and a brook; and they were now trotting up a gently rising road in the direction of wooded slopes and a low, outcropping meadow where an elongated building stood, its façade turned to the southwest, topped by a copper cupola, and arrayed with so many balconies that, from a distance as the first lights of evening were being lit, it looked as pockmarked and porous as a sponge. 

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Joachim describes himself, in a simile, as “an old water hole” when Hans arrives at the sanatorium: 

It’s really sad, isn’t it? I had already been accepted and would have taken my officer’s exam next month. And here I am lounging about with a thermometer in my mouth and counting Frau Stöhr’s illiterate howlers, and time is passing me by. A single year plays such an important role at our age, it brings so many changes and so much progress with it when you’re living down below. And here I am stagnating like an old water hole—a stinking pond, and that’s not too crude a comparison, either.”

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The narrator uses metaphor and simile when describing a past scene in which Hans, in his childhood, looked upon the body of his grandfather during his funeral: 

It was this aspect of death that made his dead grandfather look so strange, not really like his grandfather at all, but like a life-size wax doll that death had slipped into the coffin in his place and for which this whole solemn show was being put on. The man who lay there, or better, what lay there, was not Grandfather himself, but a shell—which, as Hans Castorp knew, was not made of wax, but of its own material. It was just stuff, and that was what was indecent, and so not really even sad [...] 

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The narrator uses several similes in a passage in which Hans discovers that he finds that he no longer enjoys the taste of his favorite cigars while sitting in Joachim’s room at the sanatorium: 

The corridor floor with its coconut runners undulated gently under his feet, but he found it was not all that unpleasant a sensation. He sat down in Joachim’s large flowered armchair—there was a chair like that in every room—and lit a Maria Mancini. It tasted like paste, like coal, like anything except what it should; nevertheless he continued to smoke it as he watched Joachim get ready for his rest cure, slipping into his tuniclike house jacket, putting an old overcoat on over that, and then taking the nightstand lamp and his Russian grammar with him out to the balcony [...] 

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The narrator employs both simile and imagery in a passage that describes Hans’s journey into the wooded mountains that surround the sanatorium: 

When he emerged from the woods, he was astonished by the splendid view opening up before him—an intimate, closed landscape, like some magnificent, peaceful painting.

From the slope on his right, a mountain stream swept along a flat, stony bed, then rushed foaming over terraced boulders in its path, and finally flowed more serenely toward the valley, crossed at that point by a picturesque wooden bridge with simple railings. The ground about was blue with bell-like flowers of a lushly growing shrub [...] The murmur of isolation reigned above this beautiful, remote spot.

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Despite Settembrini’s warning to leave the Berghof as soon as possible, Hans stays for the full three weeks of his reservation and, after developing a fever, extends his stay at the sanatorium. Looking over the younger man’s X-ray results, Settembrini uses a simile that compares them to a passport: 

He watched the young man laugh and then asked, “And the copy of your X-ray—have you received it?” 

“I did indeed receive it,” Hans Castorp confirmed with importance. “Just recently. Here it is.” And he reached for his inside breast pocket. 

“Ah, you carry it in your wallet. As a kind of identification, like a passport or membership card. Very good. Let me see.” And Herr Settembrini raised the little glass plate framed with black paper up to the light [...] “Yes, yes,” he said at last. “Here you have your legitimation—thank you so much.”

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When Joachim returns to the sanatorium, gravely ill, after several months in the military, the doctors conclude that it is too late to do anything for him. His mother, Luise, visits the Berghof in order to attend to her son in his dying days. The narrator, noting her composure, uses a simile that compares her restrained attitude to a hairnet: 

Luise Ziemssen was a brave woman. She did not go to pieces at the sight of her fine son. As composed and restrained as the almost invisible hairnet holding her hair in place, as detached and energetic as the people of her native land were known to be, she took charge of Joachim’s care, was spurred on to maternal battle by what she saw, and was firm in her faith that if anything could be done, it would be done thanks only to her energy and vigilance. 

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After several uneventful years at the sanatorium, the various doctors and nurses have stopped attempting to fabricate excuses for Hans to remain there and instead simply accept his payments. Describing the state of "peace" that Hans experiences, the narrator uses a simile that compares him to a school student: 

Medical authority had ceased to invent diversions for him. Except for the question each morning whether he had slept “well,” [...] the director no longer addressed him all that often, and even Adriatica von Mylendonk [...] did not speak to him for days at a time [...] People left him in peace—rather like a student who enjoys the peculiarly amusing situation of no longer being asked questions, of not having to do any work, because the decision has already been made to hold him back and so he is no longer in the running—an orgiastic sort of freedom, we may add [...]

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