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Simile
Explanation and Analysis—Like a Coffin :
In a passage that foreshadows Aschenbach's death at the end of the novel, the narrator uses a simile that compares the famed gondolas of Venice to coffins. When Aschenbach disembarks in Venice and hails a gondola to arrive at his hotel, the narrator states:
Who could avoid experiencing a fleeting shudder, a secret timidity and anxiety upon boarding a Venetian gondola for the first time or after a long absence? The strange conveyance [...] recalls hushed criminal adventures in the night, accompanied only by the quiet splashing of water; even more, it recalls death itself, the bier and the dismal funeral and the final taciturn passage. And have you observed that the seat in such a boat, that armchair painted black like a coffin and upholstered in a dull black, is the softest, most luxurious and enervating seat in the world?
Aschenbach, who has not visited Venice for many years, feels a surprising "fleeting shudder" when he boards the gondola, a small, thin boat that the narrator associates with 'hushed criminal adventures in the night" and "death itself, the bier and the dismal funeral and the final taciturn passage." The narrator, then, casts the gondola in a web of morbid associations, even describing the boat as being "painted black like a coffin." This simile, which highlights the dark color of the gondolas, foreshadows Aschenbach's death at the novel's conclusion, as he falls victim to the cholera outbreak that the city tries in vain to suppress. Aschenbach, then, seems to have a canny vision of his own death as the boards the gondola into the city that he will, ultimately, leave in a coffin.
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