Comprehension:
Read the passage carefully and answer the questions that follow:
Perceptions of time have shifted greatly over the years and many of the novels I have read recently reflect a renewed concern with their passage. Anthony Powell’s Cycle A Dance to the Music of Time is one example. Its title, taken from Poussin’s painting, evokes the universal inability to control life’s unfolding rhythm. Powell’s work even includes a brief portrait of my predecessor in History Today, Peter Quennell.
Yet the novel that illuminates our era most, indeed, time itself - is one I revisited after more than a decade, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. It was written in a crisis and doubt. It was published in 1924 between two European catastrophes and after a pandemic. The very idea of fixed time had been unsettled by Einstein’s 1905 Theory of Relativity, which gave scientific weight to earlier philosophical explorations.
The novel follows Hans Castrop, a young marine engineer with a modest private income. He visits his tubercular cousin at the International Sanatorium above Davos. “Can one narrate time itself?”, Castrope wonders. Planning to stay for three weeks, he instead remains for seven years. Life in the sanatorium alters his sense of time’s tempo. Why hurry back to work when one can wander the mountains with cosmopolitans, pursue romance and explore art, the occult and the natural world? Doctors are happy to offer medical justification for his extended retreat and to separate him from his money but withdrawal has limits. Reality, Mann suggested, can be postponed only so long. The novel ultimately raises a question that resonates strongly today. Reality can not be put off forever.
What causes Hans Castrop to extend his stay at the sanatorium from weeks to years?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → The opportunity to explore life at a leisurely pace.
The passage asks: "Why hurry back to work when one can wander the mountains with cosmopolitans, pursue romance and explore art, the occult and the natural world?" Hans planned to stay for three weeks but remained for seven years, because life at the sanatorium let him live at an easy, unhurried pace. (The hero of Mann’s novel is Hans Castorp; “Castrop” in the passage and the question is a misprint.)
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: He is pressured by his family to remain there. — Incorrect. Not mentioned: the passage says nothing about his family.
Option 2: The doctors insist on strict treatment. — Incorrect. Contradicted: the doctors are merely "happy to offer medical justification" for his stay; they do not insist on strict treatment.
Option 4: He could not afford to return home. — Incorrect. Contradicted: he has "a modest private income", and the doctors are glad "to separate him from his money".