Side note - I haven't read this in a few years and I'm sure if I do I'll hate it because it was pretty rushed after I started writing it in German only to give up when I couldn't be assed to proofread for grammar & style. I cranked it out in a few days after switching to English. It was longer but I cut a lot out at my professor's advice.
Feel free to cite/copy/steal at your whim. My advisor told me this would be an excellent project to bring with me to grad school since my initial plan was to cover even more modernist novels. But considering no one would give me money to shit on criticial theory It's gonna have to stay like this.
If for whatever reason you want to get some more info or a copy of my sources & texts just e-mail me at juhani.j.spurdo@hotmail.com which I check occasionally.

A Diagnosis of Modernity: Is there a Cure?
Anon Anonson
LTMO 190Z – The German Novel
Professor Scatterbrain
University of Commiefornia XXXXXXXX

Introduction
In my paper, I will be discussing two of the most important works of the German Modernist tradition, Alfred Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, and Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg. These two works represent for Germany two very different styles coming from two very different areas of society. Thomas Mann, a more conservative and bourgeois author, uses the experiences of his protagonist Hans Castorp during a seven-year stay at an isolated sanitarium in Swizerland as a commentary and exploration of the ideologies, politics, and spirit of Weimar Germany. Döblin conversely is a more left-leaning author whose novel explores the often-neglected world of the Lumpenproletariat. Set in Berlin of course, its protagonist Franz Biberkopf wanders to and fro in one of the most masterful examples of the city-novel. Stylistically radical and thematically grotesque, Berlin Alexanderplatz explores the themes and feelings that Der Zauberberg does not – and vice versa.
	The title of my paper, “A Diagnosis of Modernity: Is there a Cure?” reflects the aims by which I will be reading these two works. How does either novel, with its respective insight into the worlds of upper and lower class, symptomize modernism’s conflicting and caustic nature upon its denizens? Are the conflicts of the characters fully unique to a world plagued by modernism’s seductive radical ideologies? Or are they simply the stuff of excitement by which each author uses to write captivating stories? These questions will be answered by first creating a cultural and political analysis of Weimar Germany.
	Using many different primary documents of the Weimar Era, I will be assessing the political and cultural climate of the time these novels were written, and how it is each author engages with the themes of modernism. For instance, Ernst Jünger’s creation of the warrior-masculinity from his World War I writings manifests itself quite apparently in Döblin’s Franz Biberkopf – almost to the level of parody. For Franz, the man of eternal might, the characteristic of masculine-warrior is written in his DNA. But is this characteristic of Franz more of a deterrent than a benefit? Would he be the same character without his dominating “macht”? These are the type of questions I feel will elucidate my claims of Modernity as condition of which man finds himself.
	Political upheaval is also at the heart of Modernity. Suffering greatly at the fallout of World War I, Weimar Germany was plagued with inflation, economic instability, and massive unemployment. The two greatest answers to these injustices came in the form of radical ideology. One being Communism, the other being fascism. With Franz experiencing the tumultuous economy and Hans Castorp finding himself between the debates of these two ideas, each novel presents another look into the question at hand: is there a viable alternative? Interestingly enough, each author has his hero stuck in dialogue between two worlds but never fully committing himself. For Franz, his affiliation with the NSDAP seems indifferent at best, and he never fully condemns the members of the KPD. For Hans, the appearance of these seductive ideologies never fully grasps him, as he’s left in the middle by the end of the novel. By looking at various letters from prominent political figures of the time, I hope to grasp a firm understanding of these causes and why it seems Döblin and Mann refuse to align themselves or their characters with either party in absolute.
	Secondly, the topic of the modern novel itself will have to be examined. Using works by Bahktin and Lukaćs, I hope to place each work in or out of the latter’s Novel Theory. Considering Mann designed a character in Der Zauberberg to be a parody of Lukaćs, I feel this will be a very prominent part of my thesis and can be used to understand more about how modernity affects the Novel itself.
Lastly, comparing both works and authors on an aesthetic, literary, and intellectual level will put together the last portion of this essay. Each author comes from a very different background and both exhibit radically different authorial styles. With Döblin’s innovating use of montage and stream-of-consciousness pitted against Thomas Mann’s classical prose heavily steeped in the German tradition, I find these two authors to be in an odd way two sides of the same coin. While the devices are quite different on the surface, each author’s use of allegory and uniquely “German” commentary gives an excellently cohesive opinion on the world of Weimar Germany. They both exhibit similar leitmotifs of life and death, unending personal struggle, and seemingly ambiguous endings. Class hierarchy aside, both novels can be read to explore the same themes and reactions to Modernism in a way that no other authors have done before.

The Culture and Politics of Weimar
	The Weimar Republic’s existence is caught between both world wars and presents for Germany, and the rest of Europe, a system of government that is quite uniquely built on the modernism of a post-revolutionary Europe. Gone are the Wilhelmine customs, they are replaced with a less constricting and more progressive mode of life. But the aftermath of World War One offered the German people no peace of mind. Berlin, the cultural capital of Weimar Germany, saw a definitive rise in crime and socially decadent activities. An almost microcosm of Modernity as a whole, Berlin had become known for its drug usage, organized crime syndicates, prostitution, and grisly murders. The advent of newspapers and other mass media fueled the public’s interest in Lustmord (Gordon 233) creating a society that seems to be self-obsessed with its own degeneration.
	This degeneration was addressed with the greatest impact from author Oswald Spengler in the form of his meta-cultural analysis The Decline of the West. Arriving in 1918, Spengler’s look at multiple civilizations throughout history likened Modern Europe to a dying star after burning brightly for centuries. As such, Spengler’s two-volume outlook fascinated intellectuals of both left and right and offered a voice for the pessimistic feelings of most people within the clutches of Modernity. Snippets like “I see world history as a picture of endless formations and transformations, of the marvelous waxing and waning of organic forms” and “each culture has its own new possibilities of self-expression which arise, ripen, decay, and never return” came to vocalize the cultural crisis of the era (Spengler 359). Thomas Mann, an author whose first great novel dealt with the decline of an aristocratic family, felt a deep attraction to Spengler’s ideas and they can be found all around The Magic Mountain (Byatt viii). Spengler, like Mann, was deeply influenced by Nietzschean philosophy and well read in Greek and Roman classics. Mann did hold Spengler at a distance though, even going so far as to call him “Nietzsche’s clever ape” for interpreting the great philosopher “in a stupidly unambiguous way” as if Nietzsche were the patron of imperialism (Woods 30).
But the pessimistic outlook of Weimar was no surprise. These were the thoughts and ideas of a people without any real vision for the future – part of The Magic Mountain is a confrontation of this loss of clairvoyance, the way death halts progress – and as the editors of The Weimar Republic Sourcebook put it, “The ground was thus well prepared for the apocalyptic philosophies of culture which blossomed during the Weimar period, an era, as the novelist Hermann Hesse put it, ‘longing for a worldview.’” (Kaes et al. 355)
	The worldview most people longed for was at this time most apparent in extremist voices. The political aspect of Weimar was just as tumultuous as its culture, with radical views from both right and left vying for power from the populous, the climate of ideological extremism was looming on the horizon – whether it was from the Nazis or Communists was anyone’s guess. Both these parties, as different as they were, had a common ground to fight on. That ground was the German working class with its unemployment and exploitation, and both parties offered a futuristic hope for power to be finally given to them. The Communist Party (KPD) was formed in 1918 and offered the workers a new coalition modeled after the Bolsheviks in the Soviet Union. It was formed out of the Spartacists, a group advocating actual violent struggle between the classes, and the left wing of the Independent Socialists (Kaes et al. 309). Max Horkheimer, a prominent figure of Western Marxism, wrote in an important essay called “Die Ohnmacht der deutschen Arbeiterklasse” about the German working class’s struggles to find a home at either political party. This struggle “…expresses itself through the existence of two workers’ parties and the wavering of sizable segments of the unemployed between the Communist and the National Socialist parties. It dooms the workers to practical impotence.” (Horkheimer 317) He goes to condemn the Communist effort by claiming its mere slogans and rallies offers no true security for the worker who has legitimate fears in his mind. “The certainty of sinking into the misery of unemployment keeps nearly all who still work from obeying communist strike calls.” (Horkheimer 317) For Horkheimer, a radical re-evaluation of Marx was necessary to offer any possible hope for the future. He eventually became director of Frankfurt University’s Institute for Social Research – also known as The Frankfurt School.
	But in his work on the impotence of the German working class, he highlighted a very apt observation regarding the history of class struggle, “Today, the gulf between the employed and those who only work sporadically or not at all is as wide as that between the entire working class and the lumpenproletariat of an earlier period” (Horkheimer 316). In a way, Horkheimer is implicating the unemployed with Marx’s concept of Lumpenproletariat, the underbelly of society that is not politically motivated to start a revolution against the bourgeoisie. Alfred Döblin synthesizes the unemployed and Lumpenproletariat in his character of Franz Biberkopf in Berlin Alexanderplatz. Franz serves as the perfect symbol for a group of lower class citizens unwilling to commit to any real political ideology. At the heart of Biberkopf’s apolitical nature is his experience of Weimar following World War One. Biberkopf’s perfect blend of Lumpenproletariat and masculine-warrior bring Döblin to the front of the cultural-political discussion, as he instills both (anti) political aspects of modernity with characteristics only found in Weimar in his protagonist.
	One of the most important aspects of the Weimar Republic is its place between two very large and very devastating world wars. From the conflict of the German Empire across the European front, World War One had a distinct impact on the spirit and conduct of its veterans. Perhaps the most prominent voice in the inter-war period was that of Ernst Jünger, decorated war hero and popular author of personal experiences on the battlefield. He was a voice many Germans like Franz Biberkopf personally identified with and emulated in their cultural persona. His 1922 essay “Fire” brought the warrior-masculine doctrine to light, “The warriors’ spirit, the exposure of oneself to risk, even for the tiniest idea, weighs more heavily in the scale than all the brooding about good and evil” (Jünger 20). This mentality definitely sets Franz up as a person of action rather than a person of contemplation, and as the novel shows he is stubbornly strong and wholeheartedly ambivalent to the moralizing around Weimar Berlin.
	Jünger’s writing brought not only the fear and valour of warfare to the masses but the anxieties associated with new technology as well, “…if just one machine gun remains intact on the other side, these splendid men will be cut down like a herd of deer. That is war” (Jünger 19). He furthers this idea in his essay “On Danger” when he states, “The history of inventions also raises ever more clearly the question of whether a space of absolute comfort or a space of absolute danger is the final aim concealed in technology” (Jünger 371). For Jünger, and the majority of WWI veterans, this dichotomy is apparent. “On Danger” has a main argument that the bourgeois have rejected all forms of danger because it prevents them from the ultimate fate, the fate of death. Death’s omnipresence frightens the bourgeois into a false sense of security by means of complicated systems of safety such as insurance. He asserts that all fears of death are thus “subordinated to reason” and that “…the securing of life against fate, that great mother of danger, appears as the truly bourgeois problem” (Jünger 370). The bourgeois character of Hans Castorp in Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain then becomes an ironic embodiment of this idea – he retreats to the sealed off bourgeois compound for years, becoming fascinated and seduced by death but only perishes (presumably) when he eventually leaves the sanitarium.
	The cultural and political climate of Weimar Germany in regards to both Berlin Alexanderplatz and The Magic Mountain thus revolves around a few different themes within the novels. The issues of class struggle, the pain of a devastating war, the rampant unemployment and crime, and the bourgeois codes of conduct all make their way as large components of the texts and serve as a reminder of how deeply these concepts have affected the culture at large.

Lukács and Novel Theory: The Death of the Epic?
	The critical discourse during the Modern Era was filled with all the same anxieties, questions, and observations that had filled Weimar culture and politics. Here was a new era of literature that was simultaneously recognizing and rejecting the forms of literature past. Gone are the worlds of the Epic and antiquity in favor of the Novel and modernity. Two of the most significant scholars on the topic of Epic and Novel theory, Georg Lukács and Mikhail Bakhtin, offered two different views of the modern Novel and Epic that make their way quite effectively into The Magic Mountain and Berlin Alexanderplatz.
	Both Lukács and Bakhtin assert in their writings that the Epic is entirely distanced from the realities of the present, and it is only with this historical distance that the Epic is able to exist. Where the two authors differ however is their approach to the Novel and how it differentiates itself from the historical Epic. For Lukács, the Novel is a fusion of seemingly unrelated phenomena into a whole that has at its basis a world that has been abandoned by God – a progression that is more cultural-philosophic in nature. For Bakhtin, the Novel is a myriad of various social languages functioning under his concept of heteroglossia, and consequently presents more of a linguistic difference between itself and the Epic’s monoglossia. Consider Mann’s monoglossic tone of the Bourgeois or the fact that the entire Novel takes place in one isolated setting of discourse as a way to play with Bakhtin’s concept of the Epic.
	In regards to the Epic, both authors share the same idea in their approaches to the individual and what has shaped his characteristic within the confines of the historical-philosophic Epic world. For Lukács, the Individual does not necessarily exist and is in the end transformed to become a part of the social whole. Lukács uses Dante as an example for this concept, “The great experience of Dante the traveller – envelops everything in the unity of its meaning, now revealed. Dante’s insight transforms the individual into a component of the whole…” (Lukács 60) For Bakhtin, the individual is similar, he externalizes societal conceptions of himself and the other individuals he interacts with, “He is, furthermore, completely externalized. There is not the slightest gap between his authentic essence and its external manifestation… His view of himself coincides completely with others’ views of him – the view of his society.” (Bakhtin 183)
	Lukács’s view of the Novel can be compared to his view of the Epic in his famous quote, “The novel is the epic of a world that has been abandoned by God.” (Lukács 88) All authority in this sense moves from being divinely inspired, as seen with Homeric epics or Dante’s Commedia, to the authority of the individual hero’s “adventure of interiority.” (Lukács 89) This Godlessness gives way to irony as a perspective into the world of the Novel that God has abandoned. This is perhaps the most telling difference of the Epic and Novel and it brings the Novel out of the hermetically sealed time barrier of the Epic’s antiquity, and makes the Novel “…constitutively coincide with the world as it is today” (Lukács 93). Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz works well in Lukács’ definition, as Franz seems personally abandoned by God. Fate, and whether or not one is in control of it looms over this novel’s narrative and especially the scenes invoking Job drive this question into the forefront of the reader’s mind.
	Bakhtin might agree with Lukács insofar as the Novel is a product of modernity, one that can only exist outside of the Epic’s absolute past. “The epic past is called the ‘absolute past’ for good reason: it is both monochromic and valorized; it lacks any relativity, that is, any gradual purely temporal progressions that might connect it with the present.” (Bakhtin 182) The Novel on the other hand breaks free of this monochromic tone. Bakhtin claims the polychromic narrative in the Novel brings it out of the historical past and into the ever present. “The novel orchestrates all its themes, the totality of the world of objects and ideas depicted and expressed in it, by means of the social diversity of speech types and by the differing individual voices that flourish under such conditions.” (Bakhtin 114) This is very much opposed to the way the Epic presents the world as a product of unchangeable tradition. The Magic Mountain is again playing with Bakhtin’s theory. Where on one hand, it is a product of bourgeois monochromic language and therefore a piece of Epic, the voices upon the isolated mountain allegorically stand in for the voices of all of Europe – definitely a “totality” of sorts. Berlin Alexanderplatz is an even better example of Bakhtin’s polychromic narrative. With Döblin’s excellent usage of montage elements throughout the novel, the diversity of the whole world of objects and ideas of the Novel’s sphere are easily represented.
	Lukács asserts the Epic’s unchangeable tradition and all Epics’ unifying theme is that of a safe certainty because of a supernatural planning or intervention. This monoglossic narrative style will always have its heroes guided by the gods. “Hence the deep certainty with which they proceed: they may weep and mourn, forsaken by everyone, on a desert island, they may stumble to the very gates of hell in desperate blindness, yet an atmosphere of security always surrounds them; a god always plots the hero’s paths and always walks ahead of him.” (Lukács 86) Literary scholar Maire Kurrik points out that Lukács’ vision of the Novel is reliant on the fact that “…the fundamental dissonance of the novel form (the antagonism between the soul and the world) can never be abolished” (Kurrik 109) It’s this dissonance that differentiates the Novel from the Epic, formally speaking, and this dissonance is only really available once the world has been abandoned by God. Instead of having a divine guide leading the hero through all episodes of triumph and failure, the Novel’s hero must always be at odds with the world, knowing that the chance of divine intervention is absolutely implausible. To remove this deep-seated fear and pessimism, would oppose the criteria for a Novel proper.
	Bakhtin’s heteroglossia plays a large part in this revelation. With the authoritative power of the divine, the Epic is confortable with monophonic language. While the Hero might be interacting with figures that have different social and authoritative voices, the push of the gods, whose power is reserved to see the Hero succeed, removes any sense of dissonance the Narrative language would have with other systems of communication. Why would Odysseus be concerned for Circe’s socio-ideological structure if he has the power of Hermes on his side? He shouldn’t and he of course does not. The Novel however, with its lack of all-powerful God figures, thus forces the Hero to engage in a heteroglossic manner with those around him. If Franz in Berlin Alexanderplatz had a divine being on his side ensuring his prosperity, why would find himself constantly at the perils of the underworld’s nefarious characters if he swears to himself multiple times that he wants to be on the straight and narrow?

Lukács and Mann: Naphta’s Character
	Lukács’s The Theory of the Novel was not only read by literary critics, the work was also well known among the authors and readers of literature alike. So influential was this theory, that even Thomas Mann incorporated the character Naphta in The Magic Mountain to parallel the real life Lukács. But rather than reading Naphta as a parody or critique of himself, Lukács was flattered to say the least. Judith Marcus in her book Georg Lukács and Thomas Mann made interviews with Lukács and discussed his resemblance to Naphta, “Lukács’s physique and/or revolutionary career inspired Thomas Mann’s portrait of Leo Naphta, the Jewish-Jesuit-Communist protagonist of The Magic Mountain. (To this suggestion, Lukács responded with his good-humored, “So what if I lent him my nose? He gave so much to me – I am happy I could do that little for him in return!”)” (Marcus 7). Indeed, Lukács seems to have a soft spot for Mann even though he was by all means an embodiment of the very bourgeois culture Lukács spent most of his life critiquing, even going so far as saying, as Marcus points out “…[Mann] in the words of Georg Lukács, symbolized “all that is best in the German bourgeoisie.’” (Marcus 11)
	There appears to be a special treatment given to Mann despite his bourgeois attitudes. Lukács himself wrote an essay on the author called “Franz Kafka or Thomas Mann?” which aimed to place both modernist authors against one another for Lukács’s Marxist approval. Lukács states “For all his fascination with the dark regions of modern existence, Thomas Mann always shows up distortion for what it is, tracing its roots and its concrete origins in society” (Lukács 79). Lukács thus reads Mann as a very self-aware bourgeois concerned with the tumultuous nature of the society he exists in, even if the distortion does not affect him directly so. Lukács even goes so far as to label Mann a socialist author, stating, “Directly before and during the First World War Mann began to introduce socialism into the world portrayed in his writings. And, from The Magic Mountain onwards, socialism never ceases to be a central intellectual and compositional element” (Lukács 72). In “Franz Kafka or Thomas Mann?” Lukács never gives Kafka the same seal of approval – meaning Mann is the preferred bourgeois author for readers steeped in Western Marxism.
	But the Lukács of The Magic Mountain was not the radical persona he developed into after writing The Theory of the Novel, “… it was not the Marxist Lukács who inspired Mann in his portrayal, but rather that the radicalism, rigidity, dogmatism, and asceticism of the young Lukács helped to shape the totalitarian personality of Leo Naphta” (Marcus 18). Naphta’s character in The Magic Mountain can be said to be an antithesis to the figure of Ludovicio Settembrini, a figure who embodies the Enlightenment liberalism that the bourgeoisie is built upon.

The Problematic Bourgeois and Critical Proletariat: Mann and Döblin
	While the relationship between Lukács and Mann is very overt and fairly well covered in the world of academia, the relationship between Mann and Döblin remains less thoroughly explored. Döblin could be seen as a protégé of Mann, as the next voice among the great German Modern writers. Mann said of Döblin, “He was about to ascend to the very top of Germany’s artistic movement” and had tried many times to help Döblin during his five year exile in the United States (Shea 12). Regardless, not much else is known of the two men’s relationship with one another. Especially surprising is how Döblin turned to criticizing and condemning Mann along with other large figures in the German modernist movement (Shea 13).
	The two authors are consequently quite different. Tension between them would only make sense – Mann embodies the bourgeois mythic that Döblin had almost not experience with. Döblin grew up in a fatherless household in the working class areas of Berlin whereas Mann came from an elite Hanseatic trading family on the coastal town of Lübeck. Mann aired on the side of Conservative and Döblin on the Progressive. The two men had only authorship in common.
	Interestingly enough however is the way Berlin Alexanderplatz and The Magic Mountain were taken by the public. Döblin, despite his proletariat upbringing and associations with leftist politics, was not well received by the left communists. Their criticism of Berlin Alexandplatz was that it contained too much petty bourgeois aesthetics to be accessible to the everyday reader. As scholar Gabriele Sander says, “They accused him of having betrayed the goals of the proletarian class struggle by centering his counter-revolutionary novel on a politically ignorant worker-type, who lacked any trace of class-consciousness” (Sander 146). For the leftist critics, it seems Franz’s role as Lumpenproletariat picaro does not work in favor of their ideals.
	On the other hand, in an almost ironic manner, The Magic Mountain was praised by the left Communists. While prolific writers such as Döblin, Bredel, Brech, and even Heinrich Mann were being scrutinized by the Communists, Thomas Mann somehow lived up to the Party’s critical demands, “His realism came therefore to be canonized not only (as we saw) by the republican centre of Weimar but also by the official left and to be located independent both of anti-realist avantgarde and of the anti-modernist realism of blood and soil. It was a narrow path to walk” (Ridley 65). Mann’s writing is perhaps the only example of work during that time that was universally praised by critics regardless of their political or aesthetic opinions. This is quite surprising given the deeply bourgeois Bildungsroman theme.

Berlin Alexanderplatz and The Magic Mountain: Modernity Encapsulated
	Although the two are quite different in their reception, style, themes, and content, reading Berlin Alexanderplatz and The Magic Mountain together makes sense as they both offer alternating looks into the modernity of Weimar Germany. A few points of comparison from each text provides a dialogue which critiques the era. The protagonists, the ideologies, and the conclusions of both novels work together to provide a picture of the Weimar I’ve discussed so far.
	Starting with the protagonist of each novel, The Magic Mountain’s Hans Castorp and Berlin Alexanderplatz’s Franz Biberkopf, both provide through their characteristics a look into the worlds they inhabit. Döblin’s Biberkopf is a political and ideological vagrant, he wanders to and fro in the Berlin streets engaging with persons as varied as Hassidic Jews to Organized crime bosses. Biberkopf never really learns from these figures, he is merely the vehicle of interaction for the reader to come in contact with these varying ideas. While Franz seems immune to ideological or political placement, he is quite concretely set into the passive Lumpenproletariat while never once exhibiting bourgeois ideals. As Gabriele Sander explains, “[Franz] is cast as a man who is good-natured and naïve, but also compulsive and susceptible to excesses of violence and alcohol, a man whom because of his psychic as well as his political-ideological instability, cannot manage to realize his good intentions and establish a middle-class existence” (Sander 144). Franz decides upon his release from Tegel to never fall back into the hard drinking, antisocial, pimp character that caused him incarceration, but despite all his best efforts he relapses back into this former self. Franz’s lack of social mobility is a way for Döblin, a man whose early life and work as a psychiatrist brought him into contact with these types of figures, to point out the Modern Era’s stagnant political climate for the underclass criminals. The criticism he received from the Left Communists about the novel’s lack of political involvement was thus misplaced. As a reporter of those very figures he saw, Döblin is pointing out the difficulties of a worker-type who cannot be accepted by any side other than the one of his past. Biberkopf is thus a symbolic German passive-worker who cannot find his place in modernity.
	Mann plays with the same idea with how Castorp, the impressionable bourgeois never really commits to the ideologues up on the Magic Mountain. Caught between Settembrini’s Enlightenment humanism, Naphta’s absolutist Communism, Chauchat’s passive laissez-fairity, and Peeperkorn’s irrational Dionysian stance, Hans ends the novel without taking one side over the other. Mann creates these pedagogues for Hans as an allegory for the outside ideological forces being placed upon an unassuming yet contemplative German populace. Similarly to Biberkopf, Castorp is thus the symbolic German everyman, albeit from a bourgeois perspective. As Martin Swales proclaims that the Bildungsroman concerns itself with philosophical rites of passage, Castorp’s figure of bourgeois allows him to function as the protagonist undergoing Bildung, “Castorp is never worried where the next meal is coming from. He has time to ‘regieren’: to think, reflect, experiment; and that is a luxury which is invariably denied the protagonists of the realistic novel” (Swales 58). Franz too could be argued in this manner as undergoing Bildung against realism. Although far from a bourgeois, Franz, like Castorp does not ever “worry” about food or money – he is always either taken care of by his girlfriends or making ends meet with menial jobs. What Franz wants is meaning in his life, any sense of regieren to ease the pains his former selfhood and its consequential actions.
	The ideologies present in both texts, something that each protagonist should ruminate upon, are also direct responses to the Modern world at large. The radical world of Nazis and Communists in Berlin Alexanderplatz has Franz dabbling with both but accepting neither. Early in the novel we see Franz accepting a job as a Völkischer Beobachter salesman only so he can feel like a productive worker. Later on in the novel, he makes friends with those involved with Communist efforts. But Franz does not really reflect upon these ideals; he simply goes to whichever side is going to give him support and a stable future. Döblin is thus asserting that the Lumpenproletariat of Weimar Germany are dangerously susceptible to the promises of radical discourse. So long as the party, be it left or right, offers a way out of the economic collapse and unemployment, that party will gain favour of the politically unmotivated.
	But for Castorp, the intellectual bourgeois, the impossibility of allegiance is almost surprising. For such a young and impressionable man up on the Magic Mountain, why doesn’t he align himself with anyone at the novel’s conclusion? True, Hans eventually chooses Settembrini over Naphta, an episode that ends in Naphta’s suicide, but Peeperkorn’s larger than life presence pulls him away from the Italian’s humanist ideals. For the everyday German bourgeois, Mann asserts the forces of Modernity are too seductive and too flawed to ever take authoritative hold. The “Snow” chapter of The Magic Mountain has Hans nearly dying in a snowstorm, but he comes to the realization that he can take the side of neither Naphta nor Settembrini, “[I shall not hold] with Naphta, or for that matter with Settembrini – they’re both windbags. The one is voluptuous and malicious, and the other is forever tooting his little horn of reason and even imagines he can stare madmen back to sanity – how preposterous, how philistine! ... My two pedagogues! Their arguments and contradictions are nothing but a guazzabuglio, the hubbub and alarm of battle, and no one whose head is a little clear and heart a little devout will let himself be dazed by that” (Mann 587). For Mann, and Castorp, the idealistic battles within Modernity are nothing but empty rhetoric.
	At the end of Berlin Alexanderplatz, after spending time in psychiatric care at Buch, Franz emerges to work as an assistant door man in a medium-sized factory. But the Franz at the end of the Novel also resembles Castorp’s refusal to align himself with the people he has come into contact with. As Franz swears and oath of uninvolvement from hereon out, and the narrative explains the allure of active political parties, “Often they march past his window with flags and music and singing. Biberkopf watches cooly from his door, he’ll not join the parade any more. Shut your trap, in step, old cuss, march along with the rest of us. But if I march along, I shall have to pay for it later on with my head, pay for the schemes of others. That’s why I first figure out everything, and only if everything’s quite O. K., and suits me, I’ll take action. Reason is the gift of man, jackasses replace it with a clan” (Döblin 634). Considering Franz started off the novel with nothing but intentions to remain uninvolved with his former life of crime, the irony apparent in his release from Buch paralleling his release from Tegel almost insists Franz will not end up better off than he did at the start of the story. Castorp too mirrors this ambiguity when he marches off to battle at the end of The Magic Mountain. His fate is left open and the only hint Mann gives the reader is that Hans’s “chances are not good” (Mann 853). These are two rather unsettling ends to two very long and arduous novels. Without the appearance of a happy ending, is all the knowledge and experience built up to this point without worth? Neither Mann nor Döblin seem to give much in the form of either story’s moral conclusion.

Conclusion
	So what can be found in this analysis? What appears to be at the heart of Modernity is a world riddled with gruesome technology, economic instability, and radical ideologies. All these things were in ways reactionary to the end of the Romantic revolutionary era, and the anxiety felt by the pessimistic, conservative figures set the stage for the troubling times ahead. The Left’s displeasure at the incompetent working class echoed the anxiety of the pessimists – how could there possibly be a revolution if the Franz Biberkopfs of Weimar are unwilling to do what is right for themselves and their fellow workers? If the only unity among them is built from the experiences of World War One, are they doomed to fall victim to another devastating conflict out of pure spiritual nostalgia? The following decades of the NSDAP’s rise and World War Two are surely answers.
	Lukács and Bakhtin’s analysis of the Novel further cements the distance the Modern Era has from the Epic past. Lukács’s position that the world of the Novel is a sort of godless modernity along with Bakhtin’s concept of polyphony brings about some novel observations of the Modern Era. Mainly, the era’s focus has moved from the mythic monochromic past into the newly self-aware and polychromatic present. The Modern Era sees itself for what it is and calls out the injustices of class struggle and failed ideologies. Berlin Alexanderplatz and The Magic Mountain do well as examples of this newly found self-awareness.
	So do Mann or Döblin offer an alternative to Modernity? No. They only seem to diagnose its most jarring faults. It is up to the reader, along with the wisdom of distance, to find a cure and hope to act as a doctor accordingly. What we can learn from the characters of Hans Castorp and Franz Biberkopf is to always be critical of the surrounding voices and systems we find ourselves in. While we do not live in the exact same Modern Era as Thomas Mann or Alfred Döblin, remnants of it exist everywhere we look. It is up to us to take the knowledge of the past in order to help shape the present and future in a way that won’t let the perils of Modernity take hold.


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