The Tin Drum: Gunter Grass

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Beethoven's big painting in Oscar's house has to give up its supreme position when Oscar's parents had to put in Hitler's painting. Beethoven was an artist and was deaf, deaf to the Hitler shouting in front of him. That somewhat sums Oscar's attitude towards war. He is indifferent to what happens around him, somewhat like Albert Campus and his Stranger - but in Oscar, this indifference is too aggressive, almost insane. He refused to grow up because he thought grownups were evil and he is constantly running away from the world, looking for solitude - in grandma's skirts, under the table his three parents are playing cards on or inside some almirah. When there is firing going outside, Oskar spends his time playing cards inside. He risks his claimed biological father's life for a new drum - repeatedly. He betrays both his fathers and his street-gang-followers to save himself. When his whole family is facing a life threat, he is too busy watching the trail of ants on ground. Bruno Munsterberg: Oskar's keeper, who watches him through a peep hole. He makes knot sculptures inspired by Oskar's stories. He has lied to his family half his life. He himself corrects lies he has told you half a book before - putting an asterisk on everything he says. He tells you he deliberately stopped growing - and faked an accident to provide the world reason for that. The fact that a lot of information comes from his drum is not too much satisfying either. He is using both first-person pronouns and his name to talk about himself - at times in the same sentence. My German experience has been rather mixed: impressed by their technical, mechanical accomplishments: trains, autobahns, clean streets, I was disappointed by the icy attitude, the number of junkies encountered in Berlin and some crooks we have met there, albeit some of the fraudsters had come from former Yugoslavia…I think.

This indifference attracts an equal indifference from us. It is really difficult to sympathize with this guy. At times he seems to be trying to make it difficult for us to relate to him - this book can be a thousand things, but it is definitively not a melodrama. Wunderlich, Dieter. "Die Blechtrommel Manuskript: 1956 - 1959". Dieter Wunderlich (in German). Archived from the original on 25 March 2023 . Retrieved 19 June 2023. When Grass received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999, 50 years after the publication of The Tin Drum, the jury wrote in its statement that this book represented the rebirth of the German novel in the 20th century. It was ambivalent praise —as if Grass had not gone on to write several more novels, stories and poems.The Tin Drum certainly broke free of Mann’s towering presence. In it Grass is drawn instead to the freewheeling, organic word pictures shaping Cuban Alejo Carpentier’s magic realism. In turn Grass would prove a major influence on Salman Rushdie’s 1981 Booker Prize-winning Midnight’s Children.

So, who is Oskar? Or better yet, what is Oskar? He is a reflection of the society, of the time, of the people who surrounded him. Oscar is a terrible reflection of war and those vices that people hide so carefully in themselves. Oskar is a man who has absorbed all the evil of the world around him. But even John Irving, writer colleague and friend of Günter Grass, said that he never achieved the quality of the first novel in his later works. Perhaps there is a note of melancholy in that comment.Se Apollo aspirava all’armonia e Dioniso all’ebbrezza e al caos, Oskar era un piccolo semidio che portava l’armonia nel caos e la ragione nell’ebbrezza” In fact, I have not been so keen on anything German, except for their cars and the business our company does with a German firm. Nolens volens, I have a life- line and strong connection with a country of what I consider to be cold people. But I may be wrong. And I am not the warmest of creatures- I have a nephew staying over for a month and, instead of being pleasant and compassionate, I am irritated and displeased. Acclaimed as the greatest German novel written since the end of World War II, The Tin Drum is the autobiography of thirty-year-old Oskar Matzerath, who has lived through the long Nazi nightmare and who, as the novel begins, is being held in a mental institution. Willfully stunting his growth at three feet for many years, wielding his tin drum and piercing scream as anarchistic weapons, he provides a profound yet hilarious perspective on both German history and the human condition of the modern world. The Tin Drum ( German: Die Blechtrommel, pronounced [diː ˈblɛçˌtʁɔml̩] ⓘ) is a 1959 novel by Günter Grass, the first book of his Danzig Trilogy. It was adapted into a 1979 film, which won both the 1979 Palme d'Or and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980. La novela posee infinidad de anécdotas contadas por el pequeño Oscar quien, para expresarse además de tocar su tambor decorado con triángulos rojos y blancos también es dueño de un poderoso grito capaz de destruir cristales de todo tipo, cosa que sucede en distintas oportunidades.

Helene Grass (née Knoff, 1898 - 1954), Novels, notably The Tin Drum (1959) and Dog Years (1963), of German writer Günter Wilhelm Grass, who won the Nobel Prize of 1999 for literature, concern the political and social climate of Germany during and after World War II.In the novel’s first half, its protagonist uses his artistic talent to sabotage the National Socialist war machine, at one point literally forcing the marchers at a Nazi rally to dance to the beat of his tin drum. The anarchic energy and tuneless protest of Grass’s character found admirers across the globe, especially among other artists. In Oskar, Grass has a witness whose story begins in childhood. As a baby he was already advanced. “I was one of those clairaudient infants whose mental development is complete at birth and there after simply confirmed.” He could hear his mother softening her disappointment in his not being “a little lass” with a remark which would prove ironic: “When little Oskar is three years old, we’ll give him a tin drum.”

Gifted with a piercing shriek that can shatter glass or be used as a weapon, Oskar declares himself to be one of those "clairaudient infants", whose "spiritual development is complete at birth and only needs to affirm itself". The tin drum is featured in Season 2 of the Starz TV series Counterpart. Emily Silk is seen carrying it around as she attempts to recover her memory following an attempted assassination. The Germans are very efficient and because of the way they managed their economy we all benefit, throughout Europe. On the other hand, I cannot help thinking that the position my country is in has to do with World War II, the invasion of the Communists and the tyranny they brought along with them…and who has started that war? Music Details for Tuesday 4 February 1997". ABC Classic FM. ABC. 15 February 2007. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016 . Retrieved 19 September 2008.

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Another book comes to mind: The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosinski. I have read it only once and it made a tremendous impact upon me. If I am reading it again, it may lose some, maybe most of the charm, poignancy of the first meeting. Some books gain when I read them again, with others I lose interest. 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 ] War as such doesn't show up much in the book except a few chapters it contains no soldiers and guns. I don't think concentration camps were mentioned even once. Twenty-four years later, Agnes becomesthe mother of Oskar Matzerath, the tin drummer and narrator of the novel. He decides as a little boy to stop growing.