Death in Venice by Thomas Mann - Book Report/Review Example

Book Review for Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

Thomas Mann was born a German novelist and essayist on June 6th, 1875. He died on August 12, 1955. Thomas Mann wrote several literary pieces over his lifetime, some of which earned him a Nobel Prize for literature. Thomas wrote the novels such as Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice, and the Magic Mountain. He wrote the original release of Death in Venice in the German language, which was later translated into English, and other languages (McBride, 2015, p. 71). Thomas Mann lived in Munich, a center of literature after his father died in 1891 consequently inspiring his interest in writing.

Thomas Mann published the novel Death in Venice in 1912. The main character in the book is Gustav von Aschenbach, an aging German author. Gustav von Aschenbach had a vacation where he had to retire to his summer home. He, however, chose not to retire but to spend time on a resort island in the Mediterranean. Gustav von Aschenbach stayed on the island for a while before tiring up and setting off for Venice on a steamship (McBride, 2015, p. 71). Gustav von Aschenbach chose to travel to Venice because of the memories of excitement and illness he had associated with the region (Horton, 2010, p. 42). While in Venice, Gustav von Aschenbach met a young Polish boy named Tadzio, with whom he developed a curiously intense infatuation. He consequently followed Tadzio obsessively thereby tracking the boy through city canals and hotel grounds throughout his time in Venice. After some time, Aschenbach noticed a strange increase in the number of guests at the hotel. He also noticed a strange smell of a disinfectant coming from the city (Beauchamp, 2011, p. 386). He, therefore, sets for a snooping search for the possible cause where he discovered that the city had a cholera outbreak that had proceeded for a while under the cover of the city officials and the prominent business owners. Aschenbach wanted to leave the city Venice to avoid contamination from cholera. Interestingly, he stayed behind driven by his obsession with Tadzio, and he soon died as he watched Tadzio. Gustav von Aschenbach died on a beach chair (Horton, 2010, p. 45). The article will provide a book review for Death in Venice by Thomas Mann.

Thomas Mann depicts Aschenbach as departed from the world of discipline, asceticism and intellect into the realms of abandonment, sensuality, and emotions, factors, which caused the male character to develop an obsession with male figures. Other critics have considered the love felt by Aschenbach for Tadzio as a natural love and elderly can feel for youth (Beauchamp, 2011, p. 389). They, therefore, argued that the love was at the heart of the novella. However, Thomas wrote the book with an idea of homosexuality in mind evident from his diaries published in 1977. Scholars became aware of the topics and began a renewed investigation of his book Death in Venice. The readers discovered that Thomas did not consider male same-sex encounters from a sort of impersonal view but from his engagements that related to his life adventures and desires (Horton, 2010, p. 60). The readers realized that a homosexual sensibility struggled to come to term with itself in Death in Venice. With that, some of the scholars classified Thomas as a pioneering modern gay writer. Thomas portrayed Aschenbach’s love from a view far from an unambiguous affirmative. Thomas displayed a moral narrowness according to some readers who likened homosexual to cholera as metaphorically depicted in the book (Beauchamp, 2011, p. 389).

Aschenbach openly admitted to his love for Tadzio as holding him back from leaving Venice. His decision to stay behind upended his existence resulting in death. The mode of Death in Venice remains economical, realistic and straightforward up to chapter 4 where things began to take an extraordinary turn for Aschenbach. Aschenbach felt as if in a dreamy rupture with a strange distortion of the world he would settle in. he thought to himself that he should a look at himself if he were to put a stop to the world ruining his desires (McBride, 2015, p. 71). Thomas refers to Aschenbach as a god with sizzling cheeks who sets his chariot every morning with his eyes embraced on a noble figure on the edge of the blue, Tadzio. Thomas, however, refers to the obsession as intoxication. The god with fiery cheeks is a reflection of Aschenbach’s projections and rationalizations that are distinctly delimited from Thomas’ sobering account. The god sprung from Aschenbach’s hyper-exited psyche instead of from the realistic métier of the story itself. The sight of Tadzio transformed the world around Aschenbach casting his dreams into infatuations and obsessions that he could not deal with.

Thomas revealed the nature of age and the categories of masculinity as he explored the tensions arising where subjective age, physiological age, and social age is based on the number of years one has lived. All these age factors meet and impede with gender performance (Beauchamp, 2011, p. 400). Aschenbach lusts for a teenage boy suggesting a masculinity crisis and an illustration of the power of the traditional male image and its precariousness. The concept of male midlife crisis frames the issues surrounding the protagonist in line with age, illness and sexuality (Wilper, 2015, p. 1). The revolutionary potential of the text lies less on its depictions of sexual deviance than it relies on its strong representation of the potentially destructive effects of the normative beliefs of age and sexuality. Thomas Mann breaks with a long tradition of the narratives around midlife crisis portraying aging men as trying to prove their sexuality through seducing the youth. Their actions become sources of ridicule of human organizations and interactions. Thomas seems to defy such an expectation as he challenges the category of age on which the correlation of aging is based (Wilper, 2015, p. 1). Aschenbach comes to play at the age of 53 years having reached the height of his fame much earlier. He, therefore, faced a decreasing mental and physical capacities and fear of effemination typically associated with the midlife crisis. Aschenbach, in retaliation, wanted to confer a naturalistic dimension to his heroes’ decline suggesting that Thomas was aware of the issues surrounding aging at the time of writing the novel.

Thomas dedicated most parts of the novel to the subject of homoeroticism thereby giving the readers the chance to look into Thomas’ relationship with the male images of his times. The scholars suggest that the novel responded to the early twentieth-century crisis that characterized heterosexual masculinity (Bauer, 2015, p. 25). Thomas utilized a protagonist Aschenbach, who appeared to himself and others as unmanly. Age influenced Aschenbach's choice of the object of desires and his subsequent actions that seemed to confront his homosexual desire. Aschenbach gradually deviated from the masculine ideal of his time with increasing age thus struggled to integrate his aging condition with his homoerotic desire and interests into socially respected images that could ensure him the high regards he craved (Bauer, 2015, p. 27; Wilper, 2015, p. 1). His struggle with the advanced age and homosexual desire works to drive the plot of the novel Death in Venice. Thomas linked Aschenbach’s male ideal identity to youth characterizing the heroes of his literary productions. Aschenbach once used to be a writer and used the same to suppress his homoerotic desires. His retirement left him unable to cope with the desires necessitating him to seek for physical objects such as Tadzio. Aschenbach is afraid of dying before he could fulfill his desires and thus longed for rejuvenation with the ability to perform his tasks as a young man could (Bauer, 2015, p. 32). Conversely, he wanted to escape from the discipline of the society onto which his success and reputation largely depended on. Aschenbach is, therefore, left in a contradictory state typical for climacteric men. He walked and traveled daily to restore his strength within the least amount of time possible (Bauer, 2015, p. 28). The claim justifies Aschenbach’s decision to travel to Venice. Thomas portrayed Aschenbach as carrying a backpack and stick to combine the sign of youth, death, and defiance of bourgeois conventions. Aschenbach had a vision of a random stranger with a milky skin and a snub nose implying that he had no facial hair typical of an infant or child. On the contrary, his exposed teeth and deep furrows between his eyes were suggestive of a skull-like head signified aging (Schmidt, 2015, p. 192). The vision shows that Aschenbach felt uncomfortable with his aging state with the social roles becoming apparent for him. The image moreover indicates that Aschenbach’s desire for rejuvenation is elaborately linked to the urge to escape from his male role and seek libidinal satisfaction in Venice (Bauer, 2015, p. 36). The notion is further supported by his idea of Italy as a place of homosexual adventures as it was believed during that century of writing death in the Venice. He avoided any verbal contact with Tadzio to safeguard his fantasy and thus gazed at Tadzio as an object of his ambiguous desires. Thomas describes the relationship between Tadzio and Aschenbach in a purely visual manner. Aschenbach sees Tadzio as the ultimate embodiment of youth and classical beauty. At the same time, Aschenbach constructs the Polish figure as challenging the order and gender roles thereby subverting the values previously associated with the youths (Schmidt, 2015, p. 192). Thomas focused exclusively on Tadzio’s behavior and appearance that allowed Aschenbach to view him with the desires he had for him.

Thomas in his book Death in Venice shows midlife crises as existing at the intersection of the body and socially constructed norms of masculinity. The crisis originates with Aschenbach’s inability to conform to the socially accepted male images because of physical and mental changes because of age. Aschenbach struggles while in Venice reveal the futility of the attempts to manipulate his aging body and preserve his appearance of youthfulness and the social status it promises. The text suggests that less rigid roles can potentially alleviate that leads to such developing crises thus ultimately rendering aging groundless. The book is, therefore, a true depiction of the social challenges facing the youth and the aging population. The book is an adequate fit to addressing the modern challenges facing same-sex relationships.