Bebra: Runs the theatrical troupe of dwarfs which Oskar joins to escape Danzig. He is later the paraplegic owner of Oskar's record company. Oskar's lifelong mentor and role model. He is a musical clown. In the very first chapter, I was reminded of Midnight Children because of Oscar's conversational tone of narrative - same as that of Saleem Shinai. Once MC was in my mind couldn't help locating similarities - both narrators start their stories with the first meeting of their maternal grandparents, both like talking about sex, both of them feel need to hide from the world (Oskar in grandmother's skirts, Shinai in laundry box) etc. Still there are enough differences, MC is more magical realism, Tin Drum is more about unreliable narrator 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. This is how The Tin Drum makes me feel. Acclaimed and recognized as one of the best books ever, it is not exactly among my favorites.

bildungsroman الألمانية العريق، وفيها تقنية "محيط القصص" التي جاءت في ملحمة الشاهنامة وألف ليلة وليلة، وفيها أسلوب المذكرات، والقصص الأخلاقية، وفيها يهرب الراوي ويتنصل من ما يرويه، لأنه يعكس حالات عقلية ونفسية متناقضة، فهو: عنصري ومتسامح، وهو مجنون ومختل عقلياً ولكنه واقعي وعقلاني، وهو حساس للغاية ولكنه عنيف ودموي، وهو متأمل في حركة الزمن والتاريخ ولكنه مندفع ونزق. A translation into English by Ralph Manheim was published in 1961. A new 50th anniversary translation into English by Breon Mitchell was published in 2009.Oskar considers himself to have two "presumptive fathers"—his mother's husband Alfred Matzerath, a member of the Nazi Party, and her cousin and lover Jan Bronski, a Danzig Pole who is executed for defending the Polish Post Office in Danzig during the German invasion of Poland. Oskar's mother having died, Alfred marries Maria, a woman who is secretly Oskar's first mistress. After marrying Alfred, Maria gives birth to Kurt, whom Oskar thereafter refers to as his son. But Oskar is disappointed to find that the baby persists in growing up, and will not join him in ceasing to grow at the age of three. 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 ] 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.

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, who like Grass wasalso a member of "Gruppe 47" —the prestigious literary circle that began meeting regularly beginning in 1947 —wrote in a first review that this book had achieved becoming "world-class literature."Grass became a star with his very first novel.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? Oskar Matzerath is an unreliable narrator, as his sanity, or insanity, never becomes clear. He tells the tale in first person, though he occasionally diverts to third person, sometimes within the same sentence. As an unreliable narrator, he may contradict himself within his autobiography, as with his varying accounts of, but not exclusively, the Defense of the Polish Post Office, his grandfather Koljaiczek's fate, his paternal status over Kurt, Maria's son, and many others. Wunderlich, Dieter. "Die Blechtrommel Manuskript: 1956 - 1959". Dieter Wunderlich (in German). Archived from the original on 25 March 2023 . Retrieved 19 June 2023. His favorite toy is Tin Drum - a common sight in war times, for armies marched on sound of drums. His mother was a nurse and he too has a fetish for nurses, red cross nurses; another common sight in WWII. He may as well have served as war Mascot. Like Oscar's drumming, It could have been a more enchanting book for people who have lived through the war - unlike me who has to google out everything. a b c Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Christopher Giroux and Brigham Narins. Vol. 88. Detroit: Gale Research, 1995. pp. 19-40. From Literature Resource Center.