After his stumble with the snub nosed man, he decides to escape his home town and go somewhere on a vacation. It is also implied that he leaves because he is trying to escape death, when in reality he only brings himself to his physical and psychological death. During his trip Aschenbach comes upon a man dressed in clashing colors who seems to be young “But as soon as Aschenbach took a closer look at him, he realized with a kind of horror that the man’s youth was false. He was old, there was no mistaking it”. This also foreshadows who Aschenbach is about to turn into, an older man pretending to be younger to spend his time chasing young boys. Later on in the novel Aschenbach transforms himself, dying his hair and fixing his complexion just like the man on the boat. He follows the example of the posing man on the boat to Venice by wearing scarlet colors and hats with multi-colored ribbons. “Where upon the eloquent tempter washed his hair… and his hair was as black as when he had been young…. he passed from one procedure to the other… reclining comfortably … saw his eyebrows arched more clearly and evenly, the shape of his eyes lengthened, their lightness enhanced…” Not long after Aschenbach disembarked from the boat, a gondolier picks him up in a shiny black gondola. The black color compares to the darkness of a coffin, which represents his trip to a certain death. The gondolier, who is a criminal, doesn’t take Aschenbach to where he wants to go. This can be interpreted as a trip gone wrong. This trip gone wrong represents the trip that Aschenbach thought was going to rejuvenate him which in the end ends up corrupting and killing him. Additionally Aschenbach surrenders to the gondolier’s will, a harbinger to his death. As Aschenbach reaches his destination he has no money and asks the gondolier to wait while he gets out some change to pay him with. But upon his return the gondolier had fled. Before he fled though, he told Aschenbach that instead of giving him money he will end up paying a substantially heavier toll. This once more suggests that Aschenbach will pay a hefty price for his trip to Venice.
Aschenbach begins to feel sick upon his arrival to his hotel, foreshadowing his demise. He says that Venice usually has this effect on him and he strongly considers leaving the city. “ The atmosphere of the city, this slightly mouldy smell of sea swamp from which he had been se anxious to escape – he breathed it in now in deep, painful draughts. Was it possible that he had not known, had not considered how deeply his feelings were involved in all these things”. Then the most unusual thing happens to Aschenbach. He stumbles upon a young boy he calls “Tadzio” and is captivated by his seemingly flawless physique. Aschenbach succumbs instantly and becomes a slave to his desires. His morals are corrupted, another great predictor of his mental decay. He tries to make himself believe his infatuation is purely aesthetic. At first Aschenbach says his infatuation for the boy is purely aesthetic. This is what he tries to make himself believe [completely redundant] but soon he falls deeply and obsessively in love with the young stripling and soon begins to follow him. It doesn’t take Aschenbach long to progress from watching the boy play on the beach to stalking him like prey around the streets of Venice.
The city, which could be interpreted as Aschenbach’s mind, is infected by the epidemic of Cholera, just as Aschenbach’s mind is infected with his obsession over young Tadzio. Rumors begin to spread that there is something going on in the city and when Aschenbach notices that tourists are leaving instead of coming he begins to get curious. It doesn’t take him long to find out that the city was poisoned, but instead of leaving and trying to save his own life he decides to stay and obsess over the young boy. Soon enough Aschenbach’s life becomes the boy’s. When Aschenbach hears the youth will be leaving Venice later on the day he finds out he becomes anxious to see him all he can. Not long after Tadzio and his family leave the rotten city, Aschenbach dies on his bed in his hotel room.
In conclusion, Gustav von Aschenbach’s death was mainly psychological. A long time before he physically dies he turns into everything he despises and believes to be wrong. He dies a slave to his passions, degraded, and stripped of all his dignity. He turns from a noble gentleman to a soul desperate for affection, a dark soul who lurks through time as though nothing else mattered anymore. Aschenbach forgets how to live. He becomes a man oppressed by his emotions and loses all ability to reason with himself. The book barely even mentions his physical death, it merely states that he died late in the afternoon after Tadzio had left the city. His psychological decay was inevitable and uncontrollable.
