GUNTER GRASS:

16th Oct 1927,

Free City of Danzig

Had to serve in the military

Prisoner of war of U.S. army (after WW II)

Started writing in 1956

1959 first novel

1999 Nobel Prize in Literature

THE TIN DRUM: The novel is the first book of Grass's Danzig Trilogy. The trilogy focuses on
the interwar and wartime period in the Free City of Danzig, an area between Germany and
Poland, set up as a semiautonomous state after WWI. The three books in the trilogy are:The
Tin Drum 1959,Cat and Mouse 1961, Dog Years 1963.

It depicts political events during the World War II in tangled images instead of chronological
narratives.
The story revolves around the life of Oskar Matzerath, as narrated by himself when confined in a
mental hospital during the years 19521954.

The Tin Drum, divided into three books, pre-war, war, and postwar respectively, gives an
account of Oskars Danzig requiem, revealing ordinary peoples willing embrace of the Nazi
regime and rendering day-to-day lifer under the Nazis.
Book I delineates Oskars family history and the initial stage of Nazi. The development of
this book is mainly based on mnage trios between Oskars German father, Alfred
Matzerath, Danzig mother Agnes and his Polish uncle, Jan Bronski. The triangle relationship
is a miniature of the political tussle between Germany, Danzig, and Poland, which forecasts
the outbreak of World War I.
The book 2: is pervaded by the presence of death, in which Oskar loses Jan Bronski, his
presumptive father Alfred, his lover Roswitha the Neapolitan somnambulist, his neighbor
Mother Truczinski, etc., during the war. A chapter in this book titled Inspection of Concrete,
or Barbaric, Mystical Bored poignantly illustrates the absurdity of the war, for which many
innocent people are sacrificed. At the end of Book II, Oskar begins to grow, but grows into a
humpback.
Book III dwells on Oskars attempt to integrate himself into a new, adult, bourgeois life in
the new postwar political entity. He witnesses the German people, after the destructive war
and Nazism, experiencing a crippled emotion. They search for surrogate emotional release

with the help of onion to stimulate the outburst of tears and let the performance of Oskar and
his band lead them back to their childhood. Later Oskar is accused of murdering a nurse,
imprisoned in the mental asylum where he writes down his autobiographical recollection of
the Nazi period. The leitmotif of his story pertains to fear and guilt of Nazism, making his
chastisement of the monumentally criminal political deformity.

OSCAR:
Oskar, the protagonist of the novel, looks back on his life
He was born in 1924 in Danzig, Poland.
Story begins in mental hospital, where Oskar is locked up (he is already an adult)
Grows up with grandmother(Anna Koljaiczek Bronski), mother (Agnes Koljaiczek), two
fathers, (Alfred Matzerath, husband of his mother, and Jan Bronski, friend of the
family) and his beloved Maria.
When Oskar was born, he soon showed himself to be an infant whose mental
development was complete at birth.
On his 3rd birthday, Oskar, by a sheer act of will, decided to stop growing.
He discovered that he had an ability to shatter glass with his voice, a talent that
became a means of destruction when he wanted to express his hostility and
outrage.
Oscars mother, after witnessing a revolting scene of eels being extracted from
the head of a dead horse submerged in water, perversely enforced a diet of fish
on herself and died.
Jan Bronski was executed after an S.S. raid on the Polish post office where he had
gone with Oskar.
Oskar became Marias lover and fathered her child. Maria then married Alfred
Matzerath.
Oskar then joined Bebras troupe of entertainers for the Nazis and became the
lover of the timeless Roswitha Raguna.
When the Russians invaded Danzig, Alfred Matzerath, to conceal his affiliations,
swallowed the Nazi party pin that Oskar had shoved into his hand and died.
Before long, he began to grow (symbolizing possibilities of a new beginning in
West Germany) and develop a hump (showing that the hopes are quickly
crushed).
His postwar life took him to West Germany, where he was wrongly accused of
killing a neighbor.
Oskar submitted to being judged insane and atoning for a guilt not strictly his,
because to his own sense he was guilty by implication.

OSCARS DECISION TO STOP GROWING:

When he is 3 years old, he is sure, that he neither wants to be a politician,
nor a grocer, because politicians have a bad reputation during Hitlers
regime.
Then he decides to stop growing.
He chooses to fall on his head, so the adults have a explanation, why he
stopped growing.
He stays 4 weeks in hospital. During those weeks, he beats the drum till it
breaks. As he might injure himself on the sharp edged drum, his father
wants to take it away. Oskar discovers his ability to break glass by
screaming. So his parents give him a new drum.

GRASS & OSCAR:

There is a parallel between Gnter Grass life and Oskars story e.g. the
place of birth, the job of the parents, profession etc.
=> in certain way an autobiography