German Literature: Death in Venice
Thomas Mann’s ‘Death in Venice’ tells the story of Gustav Aschenbach, a man who suddenly went through an awakening of his inner desires to explore the world and free himself of his self-imposed boundaries. On a solitary walk within his neighborhood, Gustav’s encounter with a foreigner excites his inner cravings. In his stimulated state, although he claims to have shrugged the feeling off, he realizes that he needs to travel and explore the world. Gustav comes to a sudden realization that he traded his happiness when he decided to commit to a civilized society and only to produce what was expected of him. Unfortunately, this repression of instincts and emotions cause him writer’s block, significant boredom, and discontentment. However, once these suppressed desires erupt, they disrupt the balance that once existed to honor family legacy or uphold societal expectations. Indisputably, these events align with Freudian ideas of the consequences of such repression. Gustav becomes overwhelmed with his emotional needs that he is willing to put himself in harm’s way and even give his life. Thus, this paper aims to highlight the significance of desire as a means of a person’s understanding of themselves. Also, it intends to show the consequences of emotional repression, especially in the later years of a person’s life.
Gustav was born in a family of “men who had dedicated their strict, respectably austere lives to the service of crown and state (Mann 145).” He also possessed foreign traits of passion and sensuality, which he inherited from his mother’s side. However, he decided to keep these alien appearances in check, in the quest to seem more “gracious and distinguished” to the public eye (Mann 147). Unfortunately, this path he had chosen became too challenging to keep up with, and a trigger, a foreign man he spotted on the street during his walk, reawakens his desires “so long ago outgrown (Mann 141). “Freud, in ‘Civilizations and its Discontents,’ uses his metaphor on Rome, to show that anything developed in mind gets buried deep in mind and does not perish. In the text, he also points out that all through the stages of growing up, a baby is already aware of world-existing impulses, and he or she uses these experiences to develop a stable sense of ‘self.’ Thus, Aschenbach’s desires, even as a young person, already informed him of his identity and gave him an understanding of himself. For this reason, he does all he can to repress unproductive desires to manage his fame and measure up to societal expectations. Without knowing who he is, he would not have worked so hard to please the public eye.
However, there are consequences to this repressive state that Aschenbach has put himself. Freud argues that a man who is in love with another does all he can to declare oneness with their partner. Here, parts of a man, sometimes his “perceptions, thoughts, or feelings appear alien to him (Strachey 13).” Immediately after seeing the foreign man, whether the vision was real or imaginary, Gustav undergoes almost a transformation. He suddenly has an overwhelming need for exotic travel and moves to Venice. There, Gustav meets a boy, and his feelings for him drive him to an over-indulgence of his once repressed desires. His perverse desire for the youthful and attractive Tadzio clouds his rational judgment, and he even decides to stay in a town plagued by cholera. Aschenbach loses himself in his drunk obsession for the beautiful Tadzio to the point that he is no longer concerned with his waning health. These events in Aschenbach’s life reveal that desires inform a person’s understanding of their identity and their principles. It is this information that pushes Gustav into repressing these emotions and interests to measure up to societal expectations and family glory. Unfortunately, the story also agrees with Freudian ideas on the suppression of desires. In the quest to attain oneness with the external surroundings, such as a lover, an individual’s suppressed desires may overwhelm their rationality, as in the case of Aschenbach, to a point where they are willing to risk their lives for a little more pleasure.