After a time, he feels that he has become enriched by the "adventures of the flesh and the spirit" that the Mountain has presented him, and would have much to contribute were he to return (Mann, 994). The first signs of tuberculosis provide him the pretext to remain, initially, and spend his days dreaming of Clawdia. However, upon the first anniversary of his visit he is unequivocally branded fit for departure; this fact, Castorp refuses to accept. Castorp's uncle also comes to rescue him from the appeal of the Mountain, but finds that he must leave before he too succumbs to its charms.
Still, these interruptions of Castorp's dream-like existence are menial by comparison to the definitively external event that eventually lands him on a battlefield in Flanders -- the outbreak of war. Again, despite Castorp's newly achieved understanding, his actions are entirely determined by historic...
Recognizing this, Castorp remains an ordinary man to the very end. He may have been exposed to the intellectual proclivities of the new age, but the ceaseless drive of history wrenched him from the purely abstract and timeless Magic Mountain. We are left to infer that Castorp dies on the battlefield; such an ending would be appropriate for an ordinary man. The Magic Mountain elementally separates the empty rationality of the modern age with the truths of the human spirit. Assigning oneself blindly to the pulls of history is wrong: "Man is the measure of all things.... His right to decide upon good and evil, truth and delusion in the light of his powers of knowledge was unalienable, and woe unto him who dared to try to shake his belief in the creative right!" (Mann, 926).
Works Cited
Mann, Thomas. The Magic Mountain. New York: Alfred a. Knopf, 1958.
