The novel is a narrative on Aschenbach’s trip to Venice, where he becomes obsessed with a young boy named Tadzio and dies of cholera. The novel begins with Aschenbach taking a walk to relieve stress caused by his writing. He sees a stonemason’s yard with blank tombstones and an ugly foreign man. Although nothing happens in this encounter, it causes Aschenbach to become disgusted with the his environment and leads him to pursue foreign travel. The ugly man Aschenbach sees sharply contrasts with the aesthetic beauty which surrounds Tadzio latter in the novel, and the blank tombstones clearly foreshadow death.

Aschenbach travels first to an island in the Adriatic, but it is ra

Aschenbach goes to a barber where he gets his hair died along with a great deal of face makeup in a sad attempt to make himself appear younger. He gets lost in the labyrinth of Venician streets, and in order to quench a terrible thirst, he buys and eats some strawberries despite warnings not to eat fruit. The strawberries are indeed contaminated with cholera and will lead to Aschenbach’s death. He also finds Venice to be trashy and to be overgrown with grass. The longer Aschenbach stays in the city the more it decays and the more he decays with it.

Aschenbach’s fixation with Tadzio also presents a theme of suppressed homoeroticism which becomes more and more apparent as the novel goes on. This was a common theme of Norther European writers of the time and it parallels Mann’s life to the letter. Although Mann was married and had six children, his private diaries show that he had a number of secret homosexual relationships. Mann’s choice to have Aschenbach fall in love with a male’s beauty is not by itself homosexual. Had Mann chosen for Aschenbach to fall in love with a young woman, then the obsession would have had sexual connotations from the outset. It is the dream that Aschenbach has latter in the novel that involves the worshiping of a large wooden phallus that makes the obsession with Tadzio strikingly homosexual in nature. Further, in 1965, it came to light that the story was more autobiographical than was suspected. A Polish baron named Wladyslaw Moes identified himself as the fictionalized Tadzio. After the novel was translated into Polish, Moes discovered that the circumstances describe a family vacation he took, and he could even remembers an older man staring at him raptly.

The next day he finds out from a clerk with the British travel agency that there is indeed an outbreak of Asiatic cholera in Venice. The clerk urges Aschenbach to leave the city, but Aschenbach remembers the Stonemason’s yard and the ugly foreigner that incited him to travel. He cannot bear the thought of returning to his old life of impassion. He dreams of the adventures that he and Tadzio could have in a city full of chaos. Aschenbach’s decision to stay proves that his passion for tadzio has completely overridden his reason. Because he i

Some topics in this essay:
Polish Moes, Mann Mann, Portuguese-Creole Brazilian, Norther European, Tadzio Aschenbach, Northern European, Tadzio Luckily, Thomas Mann, Bohemia Mann’s, Death Venice, death venice, aschenbach fall love, blank tombstones, latter novel, symbol aschenbach, aschenbach goes, stonemason’s yard, idea venice, aschenbach fall, italian authorities, aschenbach’s death, idea venice decaying,