The Inevitability of Mortality
Many interpret “Seven Floors” as an allegory for the inexorable march of time toward death. Corte’s hopeful arrival at the hospital might symbolize the newborn entering the world or the young adult stepping out of the home. In this sense, the hospital might be interpreted as the world, meaning that Corte begins his journey quite literally on top of the world.
At this stage, Corte is at the peak of his existence—the first floor appears only a distant possibility, far removed from himself. Just as a child or young adult, death seems a laughable concept. Yet he is afflicted with the human condition: symbolically, the fever that forces him into the hospital represents man’s affliction with mortality. Even at his peak, he is flawed and intended for death.
Proving this, Corte is forced to descend to the sixth floor shortly after he arrives at the hospital. Time, just as the hospital’s strict bureaucratic policies, is an unstoppable force, and Corte’s metaphorical journey through life has begun. His fever, like the eternal pace of time, remains constant, and he finds himself unhappily traveling through the lower floors of the hospital, unable to be cured.
The fact that Corte’s mysterious illness is aging itself is revealed when a doctor refers to “the destructive process of your cells,” a phrase that discomfits Corte. Another indication is that his condition is not improving; instead, he develops new symptoms, such as eczema. The uncomfortable condition involving infection and fraying of the skin symbolizes a breakdown, the slowing and eventual failure of the body that accompanies aging. Further, the more Corte descends, the more his descent accelerates, as if time and gravity are pulling at him.
When the curtains in Corte’s first-floor window close, he realizes that the curtain has closed on his life; death, as it invariably must, has come for him, as it does for all the first-floor patients and as it will for all people.
Institution versus Individual
When Corte develops a rash on his leg, his doctor explains that the rash is treatable with gamma exposure. However, the treatment will come with an “inconvenience.” The machine that administers gamma exposure is on a lower floor, so Corte must move to a lower floor for the duration of the treatment. Corte refuses, insisting he can make the trip, and the doctor responds: “But which one of us is in charge here? Mind you, I prohibit you to go downstairs three times a day.”
The stalemate continues until Corte’s eczema worsens, and he is forced to beg the doctor to transfer him to the lower floor. This incident highlights the underlying battle Corte is fighting: that of the individual against a mighty institution. In the facility, Corte may wish to exercise his will, but he ultimately lacks agency, forced to act at the behest of the institution. Tellingly, Corte ends up requesting the transfer he vetoed, forced to go against his desires because his doctor withheld critical treatment. It is an innately rigged system that Corte cannot win.
Each demotion to a lower floor grants Corte new insight into the aspects of institutional corruption. The seventh-floor nurse lies outright to Corte to manipulate him, the general director passes an unsettling arbitrary order, and so on. When Corte confronts the officials of the institution about these unfair transfers, they shift the blame elsewhere, such as when the sixth-floor doctor explains that “more likely than not, the secretary in management … made an error in writing.”
By constantly deflecting blame, the officials of the institution make it impossible to...
(This entire section contains 343 words.)
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fight back—the institution becomes a faceless, nameless, and fearsome entity. The institution the story satirizes is one where power has become absolute and oppressive, such as a totalitarian government or a highly corrupt organization. In an environment like this, the individual has no hope of combating the coordinated effort to supersede their wishes and must, as Corte inevitably does, acquiesce to the whims of the institution, often to their own detriment.
“Normal” Health
When interpreting “Seven Floors,” many argue that the story is an extended metaphor about mortality; within the seven floors of the hospital hides an allegory about the nature of life and its stages. Equally, however, the story also works at a surface level, discussing how healthy people cope with disease—and, by extension, their mortality.
As he descends through the hospital, Corte worries that he is leaving behind the world of healthy, “normal” people. The irony is that Corte was never perfectly healthy—he is in the hospital for a reason. Corte’s thinking shows the stigma society places around sickness and death. In fact, so great is Corte’s worry about leaving the perceived world of the healthy that the anxiety itself makes him sicker; he worries himself into an ever-worsening fever and develops eczema. Buzzati’s inclusion of eczema—which is specifically diagnosed, unlike Corte’s mysterious fever—is significant, as eczema is often triggered by stress.
