The Tin Drum: Gunter Grass

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I had an intense reaction to this book. I friggin hated it. Or, rather, I loved to hate it, while I was reading it. It was an assignment in a Postmodern Lit. class, and everyone in the class liked the protagonist but me. I thought he was awful. I couldn't believe they enjoyed him, much less admitted to enjoying him. But some part of me must have understood. 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.” 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.

But considering this, even if Oskar’s life turned out this way, look up at what all he accomplished.Paul Michael Garcia does a decent job as the audio reader. I followed along in the ebook as I listened to the audio. 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.

The human life with its virulent jumps through time is ever unfathomable, ever mystifying. We will never know what will happen to us nor understand why these things happen. The journey we take is wreathed with puzzling events and painful moments, but that’s not to say that it doesn’t have its beams of joy. The odd assortment of sentiments life makes us experience is ultimately what being human is. You smile and laugh when you feel happy and cry when you are pierced by pain. It’s choosing which moments to memorialize in our minds, which thoughts to make magical that will make the difference. Let’s hope that these moments find us. Let’s pray that we, like Oskar, find our own tin drums that will give a steady beat of purpose to our hearts. Drum away all the unnecessary baggage and crosses. Let go of your circumscribed thoughts and enjoy the thrilling, pounding moments life has to offer. Let’s laugh. Let’s dance. Let’s make magic. And magic is all about believing. 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". 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. The idiom, “to beat a drum”, is to bring attention to a cause, and that is what the book does /did. It won the Noble Prize for Literature in 1999. Oskar, it is he who is the dwarf, the midget, who through his drumming protests against the era as well as the middle-class mentality of his family. Gunter Grass, a German, delivers a sharp critique of Germany and the mindset that prevailed. When the book first came out in 1959, it was banned. It was dubbed as blasphemous. During the war, Oscar gain popularity as an artist who could break glasses through his voice (showing how much Germans loved being shouted at) while after war it is his drumming (the creative art) that gets prominence.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.

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.This is my third encounter with The Tin Drum. I have read the book, saw the very good film by Volker Schlondorff (note: I am missing the German letters for the “covered” u and o). Oskar, rebels by two means—his drumming and shrill singing. Windows splinter. Glass shatters. This is merely one example of how magical realism is woven into the tale. Born in 1924 in the Free City of Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland), with an adult's capacity for thought and perception, he decides never to grow up when he hears his father declare that he would become a grocer.