Anonymous Characters, Function and Aesthetics: An Other Reading of Death in Venice

Abstract

Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice is an intensely lyrical and aesthetic stream-of-consciousness about Aschenbach who despera-tely loves a young and handsome boy in his trip to recuperate in Venice and ends up in death. In the novel, except for the characters with name, there are the anonymous and nameless characters, who are always neglected in the readers’ expectation and researchers’ consideration. Yet, all the characters in the novel are designed for some reason. So, this paper tries to decode the function and aes-thetics construction of the anonymous and nameless characters in the novel to reveal Thomas Mann’s writing techniques. It is found that there are mainly four catalogues of the anonymous and name-less characters in the novel and they are important and necessary for the fiction. They help develop the plot of the story smoothly and reasonably, outstand the protagonist in comparison, fulfil the intro-duction of the protagonist and construct a moving setting for the story, so as to beautify the story plot, enrich the depiction of the protagonist, purify the theme of the story and enhance the com-prehension of the story. It is hoped that more attention and research be paid to the anonymous or nameless characters in fiction.