SOURCE: Zlotnick-Woldenberg, Carrie. “An Object-Relational Interpretation of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice.” American Journal of Psychotherapy 51 (fall 1997): 542-51.

In the following essay, Zlotnick-Woldenberg applies object-relational theory to Death in Venice.

Gustave Aschenbach, the protagonist of Thomas Mann's tragic novella, Death in Venice, is a middle-aged acclaimed writer, who seemingly has been leading a rather conventional life. Upon noticing an exotic looking man near a Munich cemetery, he has a sudden impulse to travel. He winds up in Venice, a city with a warmer climate than Munich's, both in the literal and symbolic sense. There he becomes obsessed with Tadzio, a fourteen-year-old boy. Aschenbach follows him everywhere and thinks of little else. When soon thereafter, he learns of a cholera epidemic in Venice, which the authorities have tried to conceal from the tourists, not only does he not leave but he also fails to warn the boy's mother of...