«Mario and the Wizard» is one novella the German writer and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Thomas Mann. The work was written between 1926 and 1929 and was published in 1930, three years before Hitler came to power. Thomas Mann takes up the fascist and nationalist tendencies that first prevailed in Italy and eventually also established themselves in Germany. The plot is based on Thomas Mann’s vacation in Italy in 1926.
One novella is an epic text, ranging in length between a short story and a novel. The novella deals with only one event and is therefore usually clearly structured. The novella often follows one as well leitmotif.
Of the fascism originated in Italy at the beginning of the 20th century. The political movement is characterized by racist and right-wing extremist ideas. The leadership of the Fascist party in Italy was taken by Benito Mussolini, who took power by force. Fascism also spread to Germany, where it is referred to as National Socialism.
Of the National Socialism is a political current that emerged in Germany in 1918 after the end of the First World War. In the context of National Socialism, a dictatorship was established in Germany in 1933 under the leadership of Adolf Hitler.
The goals of National Socialism were to stir up hatred of Jews and minorities among the population and to conquer other countries during the war. In order to preserve the «German race», the National Socialists committed crimes against all minorities and mass murdered the Jewish population, also known as holocaust referred to as.
«Mario and the Wizard» – Synopsis
The small seaside town of Torre di Venere was once considered a quiet retreat, but has now also been inundated with tourist crowds. In the middle of August, the German family of the first-person narrator arrives there and moves into the grand hotel.
The family quickly realizes that the aristocratic Italian tourists are given preferential treatment here. In addition, a Roman princess falsely claimed that the Germans’ child had a highly contagious whooping cough. Although the hotel doctor confirms that the cough is not dangerous, the hotel manager insists that the family move out.
The incident
The family is supposed to be moved to the outbuilding, but decides to change their hotel. In Pension Eleonora you will find a more comfortable place to stay with a nice hostess and good food. Nevertheless, the narrator does not feel comfortable and does not like the people and the atmosphere at the seaside resort of Torre. Since the mood is already depressed from their bad experience at the Grand Hotel, even small things are now perceived as extremely disturbing. The family man experiences the Italians in the seaside resort as loud, nationalistic and xenophobic.
This is also confirmed by an incident on the beach when the eight-year-old daughter of the first-person narrator’s family briefly undresses. The other bathers are outraged and call the toddler’s nudity offensive. The tumult even leads to the authorities being involved and the German family having to pay a fine. The family is considering leaving early. However, the holiday is almost over anyway and the high season is also over, so that the society in the seaside resort will soon change.
The magician
With the onset of the postseason, more and more posters are pointing to the magician’s upcoming performance Cipolla there. The narrator’s children are enthusiastic and want to see the performance. Since the event doesn’t start until later in the evening, the parents are hesitant. In the end, however, they buy tickets through the pension operator Eleonora.
For the magic show, the family has to go to an impoverished part of Torre. The narrator has the feeling that the whole place has come to the performance. The magician Cipolla makes the audience wait for some time so that the first-person narrator can still look around the room. He also recognizes the likeable waiter Mario, who has served the family in a café before and whom the children have taken to their hearts. When the magician then enters the stage, the narrator compares him to a charlatan from days gone by. Cipolla wears old-fashioned clothes and has old, fading scars on his face. It makes him look serious and scary.
A charlatan is a person who pretends to have a certain knowledge or skill in order to gain fraud, money or other advantage.
Cipolla’s appearance
Cipolla starts smoking without saying a word. In this way, he demonstrates self-confidence right from the start. A courageous man from the audience finally speaks to him and is then asked by the magician to stick his tongue out at the audience. The man refuses. Cipolla then cracks his whip through the air and hypnotizes the man with his deep, staring gaze. The man finally does what the magician told him to do. The spectators are impressed and confused at the same time. The hypnosis worked.
under one hypnosis is an artificially created state of deep relaxation. During hypnosis, the hypnotized person is in a sleep-like state in which they are particularly susceptible to external influences. This foreign influence will also suggestion called. The hypnotist gains access to the inner emotional world of the hypnotized person. Hypnosis is mainly used in the medical field to treat anxiety and depression or pain. But there are also magicians who use hypnosis for entertainment purposes.
Cipolla regularly accompanies the performance with self-praise and nationalistic phrases – matching the mood that the narrator has been experiencing throughout the holiday. At the seaside resort of Torre di Venere, however, the hunchbacked Cipolla leaves no good hair. He uses every opportunity to mock the place until the just hypnotized man complains loudly about it. He is then hypnotized again, causing him to assume a contorted pose.
A numbers game follows, in which Cipolla writes a number face down on the blackboard and has the audience members name numbers one after the other. The solution to the trick is that the numbers of the audience add up exactly to the number that Cipolla had initially written face down on the blackboard. The numbers game is followed by a deck of cards. Between each trick, Cipolla drinks cognac, seemingly to keep up her strength.
During the break, the parents want to go home to put the children to sleep. The atmosphere seems immense and inappropriate for their children. The performance is more of a hypnosis show that questions people’s free will and exerts power over visitors. So Cipolla is not a magician, but rather a hypnotist. Despite everything, the family cannot escape Cipolla’s spectacle and they stay.
More victims of hypnosis
Cipolla will now randomly hypnotize people in the audience. A man lies rigid as a board on two chairs and does not give in when Cipolla sits on him. Another woman is mentally transferred to India. The owner of the Pension Eleonora also falls victim to Cipolla’s hypnotic abilities. He assures her that he is a seducer who, despite her husband’s protests, casts a spell over her. A Roman man steadfastly refuses to be hypnotized, but in the end performs the dance requested by the magician. The audience is enthusiastic about Cipolla’s skills, so that the event is well attended even after midnight.
Mario and Cipolla
Cipolla now calls the waiter Mario onto the stage. The wizard teases Mario for wearing a bandana. He credits him with great success with the local girls. The young man just laughs at that. Cipolla probes further and asks if Mario is lovesick. So the waiter tells of Silvestra, a girl who is not interested in him. Now Cipolla has the information he wanted. He proceeds to pretend to be Silvestra while hypnotizing Mario. He really thinks he’s sitting across from the girl he’s in love with.
The magician finally asks Mario to kiss him. The hypnotized man does as he is told and kisses Cipolla. The audience is amused by this action and it is only when the whip cracks that Mario regains consciousness and realizes what he has done. The young man storms off the stage in a rage. On his way he turns abruptly, pulls out a gun and shoots Cipolla dead. Panic then breaks out in the hall and the first-person narrator runs out of the hall with his family. It was not apparent to the children that the shots were real and not part of Cipolla’s imagination. The ending seems catastrophic to the narrator, but he also perceives it as a kind of liberation.
Figure 1: Storyline in «Mario and the Magician»
«Mario and the Magician» – characterization of the characters
characters
The first-person narrator
- husband and father of two children,
- self-assured,
- reflected,
- bothers quickly to something, e.g. B. noisy children,
- relates the confounding factors to the political situation of Italy,
- is initially aware of the manipulation by Cipollas,
- loses finally also his willpower to Cipolla,
- perceives the death of the magician as Liberation.
The narrator’s children
- cheerful, spontaneous,
- uninhibited, curious,
- are the triggers for the conflicts with the locals,
- convince parents to go to Cipolla’s show
- are impressed by the magician, but don’t understand that this is a show of force and not a magic show,
- see his death as part of the show.
Mario
- about 20 years old,
- comes from a humble background
- Waiter,
- makes friends with family
- dreamy and melancholic,
- unhappily in love,
- is by Cipolla humiliated and manipulated,
- acts as the only one against the magician by he kills him
- his act is for the narrator understandable.
Cipolla
- Cipolla means «onion».
- Resembles a vicious ringmaster with a riding crop,
- finds self-affirmation through the exercise of power,
- speech artist,
- likes to be provoked
- chooses weak-willed people for his magic tricks
- comments on his exercise of power unveiled,
- uses his power over Mario and the other hypnotized people as he flaunts them in front of the entire audience,
- humiliates Mario in front of the audience and as a result is shot by him.
Figure 2: Character constellation in «Mario and the Magician»
Structure, narrative behavior and language in «Mario and the Magician»
Construction
«Mario and the Magician» is a novella. A division into individual chapters is not made, but the text can still be divided into two parts.
First part
The first part represents the scene of action and the the atmosphere The story is about the family of…