270
EVEN WALLPAPER HAS
A BETTER MEMORY
THAN HUMAN BEINGS
THE TIN DRUM (1959), GÜNTER GRASS
T
he term “unreliable
narrator” refers to first-
person narrators who
undermine the authority of their
own stories. Realist novels tend
to offer a rational speaking voice
telling a story that meets a reader’s
expectations. But what if the
narrator gives the reader reason to
doubt, because he or she is insane,
or has a distorted perception of the
world, or is very young, or lying?
Texts of the 20th century are
littered with slippery speakers,
from Humbert Humbert in Vladimir
Nabokov’s novel Lolita to Patrick
Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis’s
American Psycho. But unreliable
narrators have been around for
centuries, and include Jonathan
Swift’s naive Gulliver and Mark
Twain’s ingenuous Huckleberry
Finn. Executed well, novels with
unreliable narrators engage the
reader differently: that element of
doubt both stretches credulity and
draws the reader in.In the midst of history
Günter Grass has been described
as “the conscience of a nation”
for his darkly satirical portrait of the
rise of Nazi sympathies in ordinary
families and the aftermath of thewar in The Tin Drum. Anyone
seeking an example of an unreliable
narrator doesn’t need to look any
further than the stunted hero of the
novel, Oskar Matzerath. Oskar
introduces himself from his bed in a
“mental hospital” where he has been
held following his trial for murder.
He explains that until the age of 20
he was just three feet tall, having
arrested his own growth on his
third birthday by sheer force of will.
History is happening all around,
but the spotlight focuses on the
fierce, tiny figure of Oskar, with
his constant companion—a tin
drum—and a scream that can
break glass. He has two possible
fathers: his mother’s lover, or herIN CONTEXT
FOCUS
The unreliable narratorBEFORE
1884 The naive boy hero in
Mark Twain’s The Adventures
of Huckleberry Finn fails to
understand the significance of
events that is clear to readers.1955 Humbert Humbert’s
narrative is assembled from
notes made in an asylum and
presented after his death in
Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.AFTER
1962 Delinquent teenager
Alex confesses all in “Nadsat,”
a futuristic teen-speak, in
Anthony Burgess’s novel
A Clockwork Orange.1991 Bret Easton Ellis’s serial
killer speaks through a yuppie
archetype in American Psycho.2001 Yann Martel’s narrator
stretches credulity in Life of
Pi, with his tale of life adrift
with a tiger—and then offers
a different option.... I stuck to my drum and
didn’t grow a finger’s breadth
from my third birthday on.
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