Aschenbach is reserved, a fastidious perfectionist, dedicated to his work and an honourable, however uptight, man. He is a serious person who writes long novels on serious matters, though there is a wild side, which has not yet been explored due to hitherto mentioned suppression. His “wild” side is that he studies maps and timetables, as if planning a trip, but he never travelled. In the following quote Aschenbach’s life is summed up, “ ‘You see, Aschenbach has always only lived like this’ – and the speaker closed the fingers of his left hand tightly into a fist – ‘and never like this’ – and he let his open hand hang comfortably down along the back of the chair.” (p. 201). This metaphor explains that Aschenbach’s entire life has been determined by rules and regulations.
Never the less, Aschenbach suddenly one day resolves that he needs change and decides to go on holiday to Venice where his life is turned up side down. From the second he arrives in Venice his ordered and structured routine based day no longer exists. Aschenbach looses control. When at his hotel he encounters the only son of a Polish family he falls ‘in love’ with him. To Aschenbach the boy (Tadzio) personifies beauty and he is unable to take his eyes off him. The fascination occurs because Aschenbach had only experienced beauty in language and had not known it could exist to such perfection in a human being. This attraction ‘takes over his mind’, he follows him around so as not to loose sight of him. This spying and uncertainty of what is going to happen next, contradicts Aschenbach’s usually rigidly planned routines.
Aschenbach transforms himself into a ‘doll’ – he wants to look younger to please Tadzio. This change however makes him look like the person he so despised on the boat on the way to Venice. This quote portrays the results of the physical change which takes place in Aschenbach “… saw his lips that has just been so pallid now burgeoning cherry-red; saw the furrows on his cheeks, round his mouth, the wrinkles by his eyes, all vanishing under face cream and an aura of youth… he saw himself as a young man in his earliest bloom.” (p. 259).
Aschenbach’s obsession with Tadzio transforms him. Before he was a respectable, hard working man who up until he encountered “love”, always did what he believed was expected of him but who was slightly pitied for his barren life. In Venice though, Aschenbach changes physically as well as psychologically. His whole existence is now centred upon Tadzio, and to please him he makes himself look like a young man and behaves like a lovesick teenager. For the outsider he is now no longer an elderly, respectable man but a ridiculous and despicable old man.