The Tin Drum, by Gunter Grass

The Tin Drum
Gunter Grass

Not too long ago, I decided that I needed to read more twentieth-century Nobel laureates. One that I’ve chosen is Gunther Grass (who won the Nobel in 1999) and his first novel, The Tin Drum.

I won’t lie; it was a difficult read. I’m not even really sure I enjoyed all it, although I have to admit to wanting to brag about having read it. I should really find a way to inject it into more of my conversations. (“Ahh, yes, I know exactly what you mean. It’s just like Oskar from The Tin Drum, by Gunther Grass; have you read it? No? Grass is one of the most important German writers of the post-WWII era. It’s amazing to read about what has happened to German culture after the war. Oh, the book is juuust FAAAscinating.”)

And, yes, the book did fascinate me, although I’m still not sure I liked it. Of course I want to be challenged when reading, but I also like to have a firm grip on a book’s reality, which I didn’t often have when reading The Tin Drum. Of course, that is the point: in a world that spawned the Nazi regime and the horrors of the holocaust, reality is not something that can be easily grasped and understood.

For this reason, The Tin Drum disturbed me, which I’m sure is the author’s intention. I was particularly disturbed by the narrator, Oskar; not because he was a bad person but because I wasn’t sure how to interpret his character. On the first page of the novel, he admits he is “an inmate of a mental hospital,” an admission that of course casts a shadow of doubt over the entire narrative. Oskar, who has been sentient and alert since birth, decides to stunt his growth at two years old and remain the same size. He does not speak but instead pounds away on a tin drum, which has to be replaced every so often because he wears them out quickly. Oh, and his voice can break glass if he so wills it. Is this all the delusion of a madman? Should we take him seriously? If so, is his refusal to grow metaphorical? I found no easy answers to these questions.

Despite my difficulty with his confusing behavior, I have to say that I really liked Oskar as a character. He is not someone I fully understood as a person, but it was easy to sympathize with him. After reading the novel, I do not think he is crazy, despite his bizarre behavior. Rather, I think Grass is saying that it is the world that has gone mad, and Oskar is an innocent bystander caught in the melee.

Although this book was frustrating at times, at others it was so beautiful that I had to reread passages over and over again. Ralph Manheim, the novel’s translator, has performed his task beautifully, and I found myself wishing I knew German so that I could read these words in their original form so that I might appreciate them as Grass had written them.

My favorite scene in the book occurs toward the end of the novel, in a chapter entitled “The Onion Cellar.” It is this chapter that best illustrates the beauty of this book. The Onion Cellar is a nightclub of sorts, where people go to peel onions and shed the tears that they are unable to shed in their daily lives. It is a powerful commentary on a society that prefers detachment and impassiveness in its people. Of all the nightclubs, the Onion Cellar is the most popular. I hate to quote at length, but this piece is so moving that it illustrates for me the beauty of the entire book:

Schmuh’s guests had stopped looking, they could see nothing more, because their eyes were running over and not because their hearts were so full; for it is not true that when the heart is full the eyes necessarily overflow, some people can never manage it, especially in our century, which in spite of all the suffering and sorrow will surely be known to posterity as the tearless century. It was this drought, this tearlessness that brought those who could afford it to Schmuh’s Onion Cellar, where the host handed them a little chopping board—pig or fish—a paring knife for eighty pfennigs, and for twelve marks an ordinary […] onion, and induced them to cut their onions smaller and smaller until the juice—what did the onion juice do? It did what the world and the sorrows of the world could not do: it brought forth a round, human tear. It made them cry. At last they were able to cry again. To cry properly, without restraint, to cry like mad. The tears flowed and washed everything away.

It is passages like this that ultimately made this book worthwhile; while some parts were hazy and I was unsure of what was “real,” the beauty found in passages like the one above made me rate the novel highly.

In a nutshell: This is not a quick read, but after finishing the novel, I felt a sense of accomplishment that I do not often feel with easier books. I won’t want to reread it again any time soon, but The Tin Drum was well worth the effort.

Bibliolatry Scale: 5 out of 6 (content); 4 out of 6 (readability)