The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
**Overview of "The Tin Drum" by Günter Grass**
"The Tin Drum" is a novel by German author Günter Grass, published in 1959, that explores themes of guilt, identity, and history through the life of its protagonist, Oskar Matzerath. Born in 1923 in Danzig, Oskar possesses an adult mind trapped in the body of a three-year-old after he decides to stop growing. This unique condition allows him to navigate the complexities of the world around him, providing a critical lens on societal norms and human behavior. The titular drum serves as a powerful symbol for Oskar, representing his resistance to conform and his means to express his dissent against the absurdity of existence.
Throughout the narrative, Oskar witnesses and participates in a series of surreal and often tragic events that reflect the turbulent socio-political landscape of pre-war and post-war Europe. His relationships with family members, friends, and romantic partners become entangled with themes of betrayal and loss, culminating in a profound sense of guilt for events beyond his control. The novel's rich symbolism and dark humor convey a deep critique of history and human folly, establishing "The Tin Drum" as a significant work in post-World War II literature. Readers are invited to examine Oskar's journey as a representation of broader existential questions, making it a thought-provoking exploration of the human condition.
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
First published:Die Blechtrommel, 1959 (English translation, 1961)
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Social satire
Time of plot: 1899–1954
Locale: Poland and Germany
Principal Characters
Oskar Matzerath , the narrator and heroAgnes Matzerath , his motherAlfred Matzerath , her husbandJan Bronski , Mrs. Matzerath’s cousin and lover and possibly Oskar’s fatherMr. Bebra , a circus midget and a universal artistRoswitha Raguna , his associate and the most celebrated somnambulist in all ItalyHerbert Truczinski , a neighbor of the MatzerathsMaria Truczinski , Herbert’s youngest sisterGreff , a greengrocerLina , his wifeSister Dorothea Köngetter , a trained nurse and a neighbor of Oskar in DüsseldorfGottfried von Vittlar , a man whose testimony leads to Oskar’s arrest and later Oskar’s friend
The Story
In 1899, Oskar’s Kashubian grandmother is sitting in a potato field, her wide skirts concealing the fugitive Joseph Koljaiczek from pursuing constables. She thereby conceives Oskar’s mother, Agnes. In 1923, in the free city of Danzig, Agnes Koljaiczek marries Alfred Matzerath, a citizen of the German Reich, and introduces him to her Polish cousin and lover, Jan Bronski, with whom Alfred becomes fast friends. When Oskar is born, he soon shows himself to be an infant whose mental development is complete at birth.
Oskar is promised a drum for his third birthday. That drum, in its many atavistic recurrences, allows him mutely to voice his protest against the meaninglessness of a world that formulates its destructive nonsense in empty language. The drum also allows him to re-create the history of his consciousness and to recall in the varied music of the drum the rhythms of his mind’s apprehensions of the world around him. On his third birthday, Oskar, by a sheer act of will, decides to stop growing and to remain with his three-year-old body and his totally conscious mind for the rest of his life. As he later boasts, he remains from then on a precocious three-year-old in a world of adults who tower over him but are nevertheless inferior to him. While he is complete both inside and out, free from all necessity to grow, develop, and change as time passes, they continue to move toward old age and the grave.
Oskar’s refusal to grow, to measure his shadow by that of older persons, or to compete for the things they desire, is the assertion of his individuality against a world that, misconstruing him, tries to force him into an alien pattern. He is pleased when he discovers his ability to shatter glass with his voice, a talent that becomes not only a means of destruction, the venting of his hostility and outrage, but also an art whereby he can cut a neat hole in the window of a jewelry shop, through which Bronski—upon whom he heaps the filial affection he does not feel for his actual father—can snatch an expensive necklace for his beloved Agnes.
The later period of Oskar’s recorded existence is crammed with outlandish events. His mother, after witnessing a revolting scene of eels being extracted from the head of a dead horse submerged in water, perversely enforces a diet of fish on herself and dies. Oskar becomes fascinated with the hieroglyphic scars on the massive back of his friend Herbert Truczinski, but Herbert, who works as a maritime museum attendant, grows enamored of a ship’s wooden figurehead called Niobe. In an attempt to make love to her, he is instead impaled to her by a double-edged ship’s axe. Jan Bronski is executed after an SS raid on the Polish post office, where he had gone with Oskar. Oskar is overwhelmed with guilt after the death of his mother and that of the man who was probably his father.
In one of the most superbly preposterous seduction scenes in literature, Oskar becomes the lover of Herbert’s youngest sister, Maria, and fathers a child with her. Maria then marries Alfred Matzerath, and Oskar, as prodigious sexually as he is diminutive physically, turns to the ampler comforts of Lina Greff, whose closeted gay husband, upon receiving a summons to appear in court on a morals charge, commits a fantastically elaborate, grotesque suicide. Oskar then joins Bebra’s troupe of entertainers and becomes the lover of the timeless Roswitha Raguna. When the Russians invade Danzig, Alfred Matzerath, to conceal his affiliations, swallows a Nazi Party pin, which Oskar has shoved into his hand, and dies. Again Oskar feels responsible for the death of a parent.
Before long, against his will, Oskar begins to grow and to develop a hump. His postwar life takes him to West Germany, where he is at various times a black marketeer, a model, and a nightclub entertainer, and eventually to Düsseldorf, where a destiny not his own catches up with him in the guise of the accusation that he killed Sister Dorothea Köngetter, the woman who had been living in the room next to his. The testimony of Vittlar, meant to save Oskar (although Vittlar earlier thought him guilty), damns him. Oskar submits to being judged insane and atoning for a guilt not strictly his because of his own sense that he is guilty by implication, an emblem of the modern world even in his isolation from it.
Bibliography
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Delaney, Antoinette T. Metaphors in Grass’ Die Blechtrommel. New York: Lang, 2004. Print.
Grass, Günter. Peeling the Onion. London: Secker, 2007. Print.
Hollington, Michael. Günter Grass: The Writer in a Pluralist Society. London: Boyars, 1980. Print.
Mews, Siegfried. "Günter Grass." Critical Survey of Long Fiction. Ed. Carl Rollyson. Pasadena: Salem, 2010. 1934–45. Print.
Mews, Siegfried. Günter Grass and His Critics: From The Tin Drum to Crabwalk. Rochester: Camden House, 2008. Print.
Miles, Keith. Günter Grass. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1975. Print.
Minden, Michael. "'Grass auseinandergeschrieben': Günter Grass's Hundejahre and Mimesis." German Quarterly 86.1 (2013): 25–42. Print.
Shafi, Monika, ed. Approaches to Teaching Grass’s The Tin Drum. New York: MLA, 2008. Print.