Essay on Exploring Death in Death in Venice -- Death in Venice Essays

Exploring Death in Death in Venice Death in Venice by Thomas Mann, is a story that deals with mortality on umteen different levels. there is the obvious physical death by cholera, and the cyclic death in nature in the beginning it is spring and in the end, autumn. We see a kind of death of the ego in Gustav Aschenbachs dreams. Venice itself is a personification of death, and death is seen as the leitmotif in musical terms. It is likewise reflected in the idea of the traveler coming to the end of a presbyopic fatiguing journey. It must also be noted there atomic number 18 no women in the story with prominent roles. The heros wife is long dead and his miss has been married and gone for many years. Any women in the story be merely in the background, unnamed and colorless-tot totallyy insignificant. Mann has purposely left them out because they are life givers, the symbol of fertility and endure. (The only one scene where women puzzle an active role is in the degrading and v iolently promiscuous dream.) There are definite homosexual overtones evident almost from the moment Aschenbach sees Tadzio-the objective of his obsession. By far the most important level of death appears in the crumbling of Aschenbachs life principles the giving up and letting go of all those ideals that shaped his character and had shaped his work and guided every aspect of his stallion life. It is a complete handing over of oneself to all that was heretofore anathema to him. The mind, reason, rationality, and all that goes with it service, dignity, and restraint all buckle and die-all fall in the wake of the trespass of passion and chaos. Dreams play a major role in the story, and, throughout the history of literature, sleep has often been consid... ...one can surmise perhaps Aschenbachs nicety would then have been rowed across the Styx (in a black gondola), or much possibly he would have followed Tadzios outwardly pointing finger and joined Poseidons ranks, plunging into a n wideness of richest expectation (75) seeking refuge . . . in the bosom of the simple and vast ocean (31). Gustav thought of the boy as Phaeax, one of the sea gods sons (29). He had seen this godly creature with dripping locks . . . emerging from the depths of sea and sky (33). What more competent manner of leaving the earthly fray than by returning to the birth of form . . . the origin of the gods (33)? Works Cited Freud, Sigmund. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Chps. 9, 14. Funk and Wagnalls impudently Encyclopedia Vol. 24, p. 388. Mann, Thomas. Death in Venice. 1911. New York Vintage, 1958.