Mann saw himself as an accumulation of contradictions: he was the son of a German father and a Brazilian mother, and an artist in a family of merchants. In The Magic Mountain he contrasts Bohemian life to the bourgeoisie, expounding antithetic theories, opposite temperaments, and even the space between those on the mountain and the people in the valley. It is not a coincidence that after writing this book, he did not remain politically indifferent and expressed his respect for Freud's work. In Buddenbrooks, he is satirical and playful. The ending shows that man perceives his own painful splitting and that a person's identity can only be found after accepting all parts of the personality as a unit.