The Tin Drum: Gunter Grass

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With The Tin Drum, German postwar literature returned to the world stage. Even though other much-noted novels were published in1959, such as Heinrich Böll's Billiards at Half-Past Nineand Uwe Johnson's Speculations about Jakob, no other book caused as much sensation as The Tin Drumdid. In the series finale of Key and Peele, The Tin Drum is listed as one of the movies that Ray Parker Jr. wrote a song for on his greatest hits album.

The Kneehigh Theatre company performed an adaption of the novel in 2017 at the Everyman Theatre located in Liverpool. [7] The production features the story from Oskar's birth through the war, ending with Oskar marrying Maria. [ citation needed] In popular culture [ edit ] At the time ofits publication, in 1959, Adenauer's West Germany was still struggling with its Nazi past. The perpetrators and followers of the regime were given quiet absolution and even placed in high positions in politics and the administration. Grass worked his own enmeshment with the Nazi regime, which he only started talking about much later, into the fabric of this work. That’s why this novel is such a work of genius – he answers with a work of art.”

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During twelve days the book has kept me thoroughly occupied. Now at home, I have finished the book and am writing my review. 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 ] Maria Truczinski: Girl hired by Alfred to help run his store after Agnes dies and with whom Oskar has his first sexual experience. She becomes pregnant and marries Alfred, but both Alfred and Oskar believe that they are Maria's child's father. She remains Oskar's family throughout the post-war years. 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.

The story here is thoroughly absorbing. The writing is of its own style—creative, unique, one-of-a-kind. Simply marvelous. Little Oskar looks at life from down below. And comments both perceptively and maliciously on life going on around him —about the growing influence ofNational Socialism;about his father joiningthe party. Or abouthis mother leadinga double life from the very start and regularly meetingwith her lover —which will later become her doom. And abouthis own first sexual experiences, about how he sees the beginning of the Second World War, how he then stirs things up in a theater on the war front —and finally ends up in a closed treatment facility. I passaggi, continui e repentini (sovente all’interno della stessa frase!), dalla prima alla terza persona rendono Oskar voce narrante e, al contempo, oggetto del discorso.The pillboxes marked with his graffiti and carvings will last forever, he believes; and archaeologists of the future will marvel at them, describing them thus: "Magic, menacing, and yet shot through with spirituality… In these works a genius, perhaps the only genius of the 20th century, has expressed himself clearly, resolutely and for all time." Lankes names his "installation" piece Structural Oblique Formations, with a subtitle: Barbaric, Mystical, Bored. To which Bebra, leader of the acrobatic troupe, replies: "You have given our century its name." During the War, Oskar supports either the Polish opposition or the Nazis (even though he doesn't particularly like the Nazis), depending on what's convenient for him. Alfred Matzerath: Agnes's husband. Oskar's other presumptive father. Politically sided with the Nazi Party. The novel is strongly political in nature, although it goes beyond a political novel in the writing's stylistic plurality. There are elements of allegory, myth and legend, placing it in the genre of magic realism.

I love this book for its creativity, its vividness and how it delivers its message. The writing is a real treat.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. Koljaiczek as a known arsonist is forced to assume the identity of a dead man. Even so, it is not enough and facing exposure he flees, most probably to his death by drowning, or possibly, and very unlikely, to a new life in America. “Called himself Joe Colchic, they say. In the timber trade with Canada.” 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.

Speaking of the Great War, Gunter Grass has been in the German army, but did not say about it until very late. This was considered shameful, even if his role was insignificant, if I remember well. And then came The Tin Drum, the debut novel of Günter Grass, who had previously published only one volume of poetry and was actually a trained stonemason and sculptor.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. Helene Grass (née Knoff, 1898 - 1954), a Roman Catholic of Kashubian-Polish origin, bore Günter Grass to Willy Grass (1899 - 1979), a Protestant ethnic German. Parents reared Grass as a Catholic. The family lived in an apartment, attached to its grocery store in Danzig-Langfuhr (now Gdańsk-Wrzeszcz). He has one sister, born in 1930. GRRRRRR The Tin Drum ~~ this damn exasperating book. It’s one of the best written, most difficult, utterly amazing, truly frustrating books I’ve ever read. I don’t even know where to begin with this review. I've read somewhere that Oskar symbolizes Nazism. Maybe, but I think Fascism would be closer to the mark. Germany falls through and so he wants to go to America. So America will become the new Fascist state?