Local Anaesthetic: Analysis of Major Characters
"Local Anaesthetic: Analysis of Major Characters" explores the intricate relationships and psychological struggles of several characters, primarily centered around Eberhard Starusch, a middle-aged teacher grappling with his past and the implications of his unfulfilled life. Starusch, described as a liberal Marxist, reflects on his experiences while undergoing dental work, revealing his deep-seated regrets, particularly regarding his former fiancée, Linde Krings, and his efforts to influence a passionate student, Philipp Scherbaum. Scherbaum embodies youthful idealism, facing moral dilemmas over expressing his values, while his radical girlfriend, Vero Lewand, rejects any form of compromise. The narrative is enriched by Starusch's interactions with his dentist, a Stoic rationalist, and Irmgard Seifert, a fellow teacher burdened by her past affiliations with the Nazi regime. The complex dynamics among these characters illustrate themes of guilt, commitment, and the struggle between idealism and realism. Overall, the analysis invites readers to reflect on how past experiences shape present actions in a world filled with conflicting ideologies.
Local Anaesthetic: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Günter Grass
First published: Örtlich betäubt, 1969 (English translation, 1969)
Genre: Novel
Locale: West Berlin
Plot: Social realism
Time: 1967
Eberhard Starusch (AY-behr-hahrt SHTAH-rewsh), nicknamed Hardy. He is the grown-up Störtebeker, a character from The Tin Drum (1961) who had been the wartime leader of a Danzig youth gang, the Dusters. Starusch, at the time of this story, is a forty-year-old teacher of German and history. Despite the aggressive look of his forcefully protruding chin, Starusch, who describes himself as a liberal Marxist, is inclined to compromise. His life is boring and uncommitted. He even avoids the painful consequences of dental work through frequent doses of anesthetic. While having bridgework done, he daydreams about his life and carries on a discussion with his dentist. Starusch claims to have been an engineer, who, when rejected by his fiancée, returned to school with money she gave him in compensation and earned a teacher's certificate. He discusses with the dentist his attempt to dissuade his student, Philipp Scherbaum, from acting on his values in a provocative way.
The dentist, a rationalist disciple of the Stoic Seneca who treats and counsels both Starusch and Philipp Scherbaum. He is a staunch supporter of science and reality. The anesthetizing television, which he uses to distract his patients, is the medium that prompts Starusch's confused outpouring of present predicament, memory, and fantasy.
Philipp “Flip” Scherbaum (SHEHR-bowm), Starusch's favorite student, a talented seventeen-year-old who is deeply concerned about acting in response to his values. An uncompromising idealist, Philipp is appalled by the napalming of civilians in Vietnam and decides to douse his dachshund, Max, with gasoline and to set him on fire in front of Hotel Kempinski's café, which would be packed with cake-eating women. Starusch employs dialogue to delay and eventually to undermine Philipp's action. Philipp begins to doubt his original impulse and to consider modifications and alternatives. To the disgust of his radical girlfriend, Vero Lewand, he eventually decides that the act, lacking spontaneity and purity, would be without value. He accepts the editorship of the school paper and more and more pursues a path of reformism and compromise.
Veronica (Vero) Lewand (LAY-vahnd), the thin and nasal seventeen-year-old radical student and girlfriend of Scherbaum. She continually wears absinthe-green tights. She has embraced extreme radicalism with religious fervor and proclaims it didactically through her nose. She denounces any form of reformism or compromise with reaction but is willing to use an offer of sex or threat of blackmail to deter Starusch from interfering in Scherbaum's planned immolation of his dog.
Irmgard Seifert (ZI-fehrt), a thirty-nine-year-old fellow teacher and friend of Starusch who speaks in proclamations and is nicknamed the “arch angel.” Seifert, a self-righteous champion of civic morality and anti-authoritarianism, is overwhelmed with guilt and self-incrimination when she discovers letters she had written in 1945 as a seventeen-year-old squad leader in the Nazi League of German Girls. She had conveniently forgotten ordering teenage boys to defend their refugee camp to the death against the enemy and demanding that the Nazi authorities take action against a recalcitrant peasant. Totally self-absorbed, she, in her guilt, is unable to think or talk of anything or anyone else. Starusch, whom she regards as insufficiently sensitive and committed, eventually frees her of her guilt by burning the letters. Both partially overcome their lack of commitment and inaction by agreeing to a seemingly interminable engagement.
Sieglinde (Linde) Krings (zeeh-LIHN-deh krihngz), Starusch's thin, rigid, and goatlike former fiancée. Krings, whose father was a prisoner of war in Russia, is the apparent heiress to the Krings Cement Works. Starusch, a promising engineer, was hired by Linde and became her fiancée. She tired of his boring pedantry and ended the engagement after two and a half years. The dentist claims that the whole story of Linde is a fabrication. Undeterred, Starusch insists on the veracity of his version and cannot free himself from the memory of Linde, against whom he has concocted murderous fantasies of revenge.
Field Marshal General Ferdinand Krings, a former commander on the Eastern Front who directed one losing action after another and won the hatred of his men by demanding futile resistance. He returned home after being released from a Russian prison camp in 1956. Having lost his own battles, he was determined to re-create battles lost by others and to win them himself. To his dismay, he was defeated by his daughter, Linde. Rather than shoot himself, he decided to go into politics.
Heinz Schlottau (hints SHLAHT-tow), an electrician at the Krings Cement Company who had served under Ferdinand Krings. He re-created, for Krings, the lay of battles in a sandbox with lights and switches. He traded information on Krings' troop dispositions to Linde for sex. In Starusch's fantasies, after Linde broke her engagement with Starusch, she married Schlottau. The dentist claims that Starusch, if he had ever been an engineer, had an affair with Schlottau's wife, which wrecked his engagement and cost him his job.