DIV 3

Summary

• Goes to Pola but then decides he doesn't want to be there
• goes on a boat to Venice
• meets an old man who fakes being young and is disgusted by him
• Has a rather odd experience with a fake gondolier without a licence
• sees many different peoples around him including a polish family with a curiously beautiful son
• Feels ill and decides to leave
• Ends up not leaving due to luggage problems but is quite glad as he changed his mind
• Realises part of the reason he didn't want to leave was Tadzio

Themes and Motifs

• discipline vs spontaneity
• black
• death
• circus
• old vs youth
• facades
• omens
• dreams and myth vs reality
• obscenity and reservation
• lion and the snake
• seduction of death
• yellow
• rebellion
• Hell
• forbidden fruit
• religious imagery
• Divinity
• sickness
• Grey
• Simplicity vs opulence
• escape
• Red

Character

Aschenbach

He isn't developed but we see a change begin to develop in him. He becomes more open to spontanerity and relaxes from his strict discipline. He allows dreams to govern more than logic.

Miscellaneous

There are a few characters such as the gondolier, the old young man and the captain who are worth mentioning. Firstly it seems significant that they all have yellow or reddish hair. They all stand out and turn out to be more than they appear. Indeed the colour yellow seems to have connotations of ill omen as it appears again and again in sickly connotation.

Tadzio

Appears to Aschenbach as a piece of Greek Mythology and great beauty. However, he has blonde hair and is proclaimed to look sickly. The characters that Aschenbach associate tadzio with have controversy covering them.

Narrative Voice

Smell becomes important and is frequently brought up. The lavish description continues. Religious imagery contrasts the mythical imagery.

Setting

Set in Venice. The rules are different in this new place and has physically changed Aschenbach. rather than rigid and planned as Munich is; venice is haphazard, full of chance and mystery as well as swamped in history , particularly Renaissance and Byzantium.