The Tin Drum: Gunter Grass

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The Onion Cellar, a play by Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione of The Dresden Dolls with the American Repertory Theater, is based on a chapter in The Tin Drum. The crucial question of this character is: now that the issue of German guilt is dealt with, can I begin to grow up? Can there be, metaphorically speaking, a mature new Germany? Or am I going to keep banging my tin drum like a monstrous little terrorist? That’s the key question. It’s not just Oskar’s coming of age story, but that of an entire country.” Sanctuary, at least for some people, may best be found in an insane asylum. From his white-enamelled metal hospital bed, under the watchful, if bewildered eye of Bruno, his nurse, Oskar Matzerath sets out with the help of a family photograph album to tell not only his story but also that of his country. This novelist, poet, playwright, illustrator, graphic artist, and sculptor since 1945 lived in West Germany but in his fiction frequently returned to the Danzig of his childhood. He always identified as a Kashubian. La historia comprende el período que va desde el año 1920 hasta 1950, o sea, desde que Oscar narra cómo fue engendrada su madre hasta que cumple los 30 años de edad y además comienza contando su historia desde el hospital psiquiátrico en el que se encuentra internado con Bruno, el enfermero devenido casi en su asistente personal.

There is Bruno, Oskar's attendant in the loony bin. There is the elegant Jan Bronski, Oskar's mother's lover. (She is married to Matzerath). There is Oskar's beloved mother herself, and his Kashubian grandmother, who grows potatoes and always wears four skirts. And so on...there are many minor characters too. The story here is thoroughly absorbing. The writing is of its own style—creative, unique, one-of-a-kind. Simply marvelous. Bebra: Runs the theatrical troupe of dwarfs which Oskar joins to escape Danzig. He is later the paraplegic owner of Oskar's record company. Oskar's lifelong mentor and role model. He is a musical clown. Oskar tells us that at his baptism in the local Catholic church he deliberately does not renounce Satan (which the adults present, including his putative father, Jan Bronski attribute to his "retardation). Actually, Oskar wants to keep his relationship with Satan and not denounce it. After the baptism, Oskar whispers to Satan (who seems to be alive and well within him):It was adapted into a 1979 film, which won both the Palme d'Or, in the same year, and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film the following year.

Oskar Matzerath: Writes his memoirs from 1952 to 1954, age 28 to 30, appearing as a zeitgeist throughout historic milestones. He is the novel's main protagonist and unreliable narrator. The Tin Drum has religious overtones, both Jewish and Christian. Oskar holds conversations with both Jesus and Satan throughout the book. His gang members call him "Jesus", and he refers to himself as "Satan" later in the book. [4] Critical reception [ edit ] For Reese, who made his name with one-man shows based on letters and diaries of other such crowd-pleasers as Joseph Goebbels and the notorious German child murderer Jürgen Bartsch, Oskar Matzerath is a man whose conscience is on trial. Grass, Günter (4 October 2009). "Guenter Grass - The Tin Drum". World Book Club (Interview). Interviewed by Harriet Gilbert. BBC World Service. Archived from the original on 9 April 2023 . Retrieved 19 June 2023.Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who like Grass wasalso a member of "Gruppe 47" —the prestigious literary circle that began meeting regularly beginning in 1947 —wrote in a first review that this book had achieved becoming "world-class literature."Grass became a star with his very first novel. Dog Years" is a weird one, because while I was reading it I was constantly asking myself "where is he going with this?" and now that its over I think it might actually be the best of the three, both in audacity and getting its aims across. Or maybe I was just more attuned to the style by then. Its much tougher going at first. Without the shortness of "Cat and Mouse" or the cuteness of a crazy dwarf musician narrator to make things go down easier. Reading the cover copy you'd think it would be the most straightforward, as the publisher of my version describes the book as a boy and Hitler's dog avenging Nazi war crimes in post-war Germany, which sounds like a great idea for a TV show ("He's a traumatized soldier unable to come to grips with his past, the other used to enjoy belly rubs from unrepentant blots on humanity. Together, they fight crime.") but by the time that even becomes relevant you're way into the book. A cualquiera que intentara quitarme el tambor le rompí, quebré, e hice añicos, a grito de chillidos, cristales de ventanas, vasos llenos de cerveza llenos, botellas de cerveza vacías, frascos de perfume, platones de adorno, y en una palabra toda clase de objetos de vidrio manufacturados por el vidriera, en parte como simple vidrio o como artístico." The Tin Drum is a strange, big novel, an epic satire and farce; it is also a provincial, magical realist, picaresque tale. This is the story of Oskar Matzerath, who tells his life story from a German mental hospital in 1954. Having deliberately stunted his growth at the age of 3 and capable of shattering glass with his voice, Oskar is a force of chaos, torn between the teachings of the mad faith healer Rasputin and the poet-prince Goethe, and between Satan and Jesus, both of whom Oskar impersonates. Ma, come accadrebbe a chiunque, nei giorni in cui un senso di colpa sgarbato e impossibile da scacciare mi abbatte sui guanciali del mio letto di manicomio, cerco di appigliarmi alla mia ignoranza, che allora venne di moda, e che ancora oggi molti si portano in giro.

What makes Matzerath an even more ambiguous character is that he is also an artist figure, and part self-portrait of his original creator. When Grass published his debut novel in 1959, aged 31, The Tin Drum was perceived as an assault on the German bourgeoisie. And let us reduce it further: "Chapter 27 – Inspection of Concrete, or Barbaric, Mystical, Bored." A title which says, for me, all that needs to be said about the modern world. Here, Oskar and a troupe of midget acrobats and entertainers visit the German "pillbox" defence posts in northern France, late on in the war, as his country's doom looms large. They meet corporal Lankes, a former artist who now views these brutally efficient standards of war and hatred as genuine, profound artworks.Oscar's is attracted alternatively to Rasputin and Goethe in R-G-R-G sequence which seems to show Germany's WWI-peace-WWII-peace sequence. I have both to thank the Germans for the trade which is keeping our privately owned company afloat and condemn them for about 25 miserable years of my life. Armed with the titular drum, Oskar, an incorrigible aesthete understood by no one but loved, at various times, by many, uses his instrument to drum up memories of his perfectly remembered life, beginning with his birth in 1924. It is through this compulsive devotion to rhythm that Oskar is able to produce his personal image of German history. And through his telling, we learn about the first days of WWII, when Oskar’s presumptive father reluctantly joined in the defense of the Danzig post office and became equal parts martyr and coward. If I were to use a word to describe the way I see the characters and events in the book that would be: