Arguably one of the most notable aspects of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice is its elaborate metaphorical and symbolic content. When evaluating such an involved text, concentrating the focus of an essay in any one school of criticism while largely ignoring the others such as John Burt Foster does in "Why is Tadzio Polish? Kultur and Cultural Multiplicity in Death in Venice," constitutes an incomplete analysis. Death in Venice is as much a delve into the social and cultural happenings of the immediate pre-World-War-I era as it is a critique of artistry, education, sexual repression, the inner struggle between Dionysian and Apollonian ideals, making it equally susceptible to criticism of nearly all forms. However, placing analytical limitations on interpreting such a wellspring of symbolism such as Mann's novella is not deplorable; it is necessary due to the numerous connotations the text has. As Foster himself said "(...) lifting the taboos surrounding the discussion of homosexuality in literature can also obscure other issues that deserve attention" (199). Even though Foster disregards the importance of other forms of evaluation by limiting the scope of his analysis of Tadzio's gender to that of cultural criticism, his ultimate conclusion that Tadzio must be a boy because of the social ramifications it entails both for Aschenbach and Deutschekultur is substantially bolstered by the socio-cultural tensions explained in the essay and the parallelisms of Aschenbach to Germany.
             In his essay Foster divulges what he perceives to be the reason Tadzio must be a boy as the apparent exposition of "the falsity of Anschenbach's public persona, not just as a morally edifying figure who could never indulge in a scandalous sexual adventure but as the voice of a German Kultur that felt itself utterly distinct from the Slavic East" (207). Given the stigma of Tadzio being a boy and the significa...