The Magic Mountain can be read both as a classic example of the European Bildungsroman – a "novel of education" or "novel of formation" – and as a cunning satire of this genre. Many formal elements of this type of fiction are present: like the protagonist of a typical Bildungsroman, the immature Castorp leaves his home and learns about art, culture, politics, human frailty, and love. Also embedded within this vast novel are extended reflections on the experience of time, music, nationalism, sociological issues, and changes in the natural world. Castorp's stay in the rarefied air of The Magic Mountain provides him with a panoramic view of pre-war European civilization and its discontents.
Mann describes the subjective experience of serious illness and the gradual process of medical institutionalization. He also alludes to the irrational forces within the human psyche, at a time when Freudian psychoanalysis was becoming a prominent type of treatment. These themes relate to the development of Castorp's character over the time span covered by the novel. In his discussion of the work, written in English and published in The Atlantic in January 1953, Mann states that "what [Hans] came to understand is that one must go through the deep experience of sickness and death to arrive at a higher sanity and health...".
Mann acknowledged his debt to the skeptical insights of Friedrich Nietzsche concerning modern humanity, and he drew from these in creating conversations between the characters. Throughout the book the author employs the discussions among Settembrini, Naphta, and the medical staff to introduce the young Castorp to a wide spectrum of competing ideologies about responses to the Age of Enlightenment. However, whereas the classical Bildungsroman would conclude by Castorp's having become a mature member of society, with his own world-view and greater self-knowledge, The Magic Mountain ends with Castorp's becoming an anonymous conscript, one of millions, under fire on some battlefield of World War I.
