The Tin Drum 499The amount of incriminating evidence that
Oskar discloses at the very least suggests a guilty
conscience. However, in each case, it is impossible to
determine unequivocally the degree of Oskar’s guilt.
Oskar changes his stories repeatedly; moreover, it is
his version of events, and therefore subjective and
possibly entirely of his own invention. He also freely
admits to being a liar, as in the case of the Dust-
ers’ trial, where he plays the role of innocent victim
to avoid punishment. Furthermore, as a mental
patient, all of Oskar’s recollections become highly
questionable.
Less compelling perhaps than Oskar’s individual
guilt is the greater and more complex issue of collec-
tive guilt for the crimes of National Socialism. Oskar
connects the two in his account of Jan Bronski’s
death when he describes how he tries to assuage his
guilty conscience. Here Oskar equates his personal
feelings of guilt with the collective guilt of the
nation. Like everyone else, he says, he soothes his
guilty conscience by making excuses for past mis-
deeds. Later, he describes how he participates in dis-
cussions at the British Centre, where individuals talk
about collective guilt so that later their consciences
will be clear. Here, the novel casts doubt on the pro-
cess of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (a German term
meaning “coming to terms with the past”), suggest-
ing that national debates about collective guilt have
not effectively tackled questions of complicity, but
simply help individuals to distance themselves from
the past. Oskar’s autobiography, which oscillates
between confession and denial of guilt, must be seen
in this broader context. It thus offers a reflection on
the complicated process of dealing with national
responsibility for the crimes of Nazi Germany.
Christina Kraenzle
identity in The Tin Drum
One of the most striking features of The Tin Drum
is the complexity of its main character, Oskar, a
highly ambivalent figure who portrays himself alter-
nately as naïve child and knowing adult, unwitting
participant in events and active shaper of his own
destiny, innocent bystander and complicit villain.
He is also quite likely a madman, a possibility sup-
ported by a narrative structure that moves between
first- and third-person narration. Oskar’s tendency
to refer to himself not as “I” but as “Oskar” suggests
self-alienation and identity crisis. But the challenge
of The Tin Drum is not to try to determine what
constitutes the “real” Oskar, but rather to consider
how these multiple identities coexist.
The multiplicity of identities is introduced at the
beginning of the novel when Oskar recalls his many
outings to the cinema with Klepp, after which they
have their passport photos taken. Oskar describes
how he and Klepp manipulate the photos, folding or
cutting them to combine old and new photographs
or to merge the features of both men into new
images of themselves. As a metaphor for identity,
the montages that Oskar and Klepp create point to
the multifaceted influences and self-identifications
that make up Oskar’s character. They also suggest
the constructedness of the images Oskar offers: Just
as Oskar and Klepp fashion their own photographic
images, Oskar, the autobiographer, creates multiple,
and often conflicting, self-images in his written
account.
Oskar’s identity crisis is reflected in his obses-
sions about his parentage, in particular his uncer-
tainty about which of his two “presumptive fathers”
is in fact the biological one. While he at first sug-
gests that Jan Bronski is his true father, he later sug-
gests that it is most likely Alfred Matzerath. This
uncertainty leads Oskar to refer to himself both as
Oskar Matzerath and Oskar Bronski. He also takes
the name Koljaiczek, after his maternal grandfather,
with whom he also identifies.
Oskar’s education under the tutelage of Gretchen
Scheffler, who introduces him to both Goethe
and Rasputin, also shapes his self-image. Oskar
takes pages from the two books and shuffles them
randomly to create a new volume that he reads
throughout his life. Oskar alternately identifies with
Goethe, who represents enlightenment and ratio-
nality, and with Rasputin, who represents darkness
and irrationality. Oskar later asks Bruno to fashion a
string figure that will combine the features of Oskar,
Goethe, and Rasputin, symbolizing the two poles
that constitute Oskar’s identity.
His mother’s frequent visits to church introduce
Oskar to religion, and he subsequently identifies
with both Jesus and Satan. Oskar believes he resem-
bles the figure of Jesus in the Church of the Sacred